Wednesday's CCDC Board hearing of the Gran Havana
redevelopment case was more interesting for what it did
not say than for what it did.

Starting with
the Agenda.
The Gaslamp Renaissance Hotel, formerly the Gran Havana
Cigar Shop, was Item 17. Note that it made no mention of
the alternative action available to the Board, viz. to
sign this
draft Notice
of Default (pages 15-16) specially prepared for this CCDC
Board meeting but hidden deep in the 57 page staff
report. The actual Agenda only offered the Board action recommended by the staff, viz. to extend Ramin
Samimi's development agreement for another two years.
That is dirty pool by the staff.

Nancy Graham and Eli Sanchez tried to
hoodwink the Board into doing what staff wanted. The
unmistakable impression was intentionally given that the
only action available to the Board was to extend the developer's contract. That
contract is now in default for over six months - since
December 15, 2006. Putting Samimi in default was not an
option.

Well, the Board didn't go for it. They voted unanimously
to send the matter back to the Real Estate sub-Committee
on July 11, 2007. Here is
a link to that Agenda.
It is not published yet but try it again next
week. In the meantime, for a look at what the Real
Estate Committee does, here is a link to
its Agenda for its last meeting on June 13, 2007.

Not getting their way on Wednesday put Nancy and Eli's
plan to help Samimi out of kilter. No matter what the Real Estate
Committee decides on July 11, it has to come back to the
full CCDC Board on July 25 as a recommendation only. Here
is the
link to the July meeting agenda. Click on it during
July when the Agenda will be published.

Again, no matter what the CCDC Board decides on July 25,
the item has to come before the Redevelopment Agency
Board (8 Member City Council sitting as the
Redevelopment Agency). There is no RDA board
meeting in August, therefore the earliest Samimi can get
his extension is September 11, 2007. By then he will be
9 months in default.

What was obvious from watching Wednesday's meeting is
that the Gran Havana case is not about whether eminent
domain is a good thing or a bad thing (although that is
what they want us to think) it is about favoritism. It
is clear that the CCDC staff, for whatever reason, favors Samimi over Mesdaq. They have done so from the very
beginning.

Did somebody get paid off? Staff members stuck their necks out a
long way, for themselves or somebody higher up, by issuing
a falsePolanco Notice
(alleging the presence of a toxic waste dump) on the
5,000 square feet lot owned by Mesdaq but not on the
adjacent 35,000 square feet owned by Samimi. That smells
of corruption.

I
think the handshake picture in the U-T this morning was
a little unfair to both men, so here is my picture of
the same moment yesterday.

The U-T picture gave the false impression that Sanders
and Aguirre avoided looking at each other as they shook
hands. As you can see, that is not correct.

In the interest of fairness I just thought I would clear
that up.

The purpose of the press conference was to hand out
this letter, the Mayor's response to
Sunroad's letter, which was the subject of the 9:00
PM press conference the night before and Mr. Aguirre
response to both the Mayor and Sunroad. Enjoy.

At the risk of being accused of puckering up to Mike
(Mike knows I don't "pucker up" very well) we should all
be grateful to him for personally taking the time to
write a full four page letter of careful explanation to
Sunroad. It is pure Aguirre. This is not just
showmanship for Mike, he really does care. He takes the
time. I think even Sanders will admit that.

CCDC used a
false allegation of toxic waste to seize Gran Havana.
06/25/07

Mayor Sanders must deal with the emerging Gran Havana
scandal before he has another Sunroad on his hands,
maybe even worse.

Eli Sanchez, the CCDC project manager for Ramin Samimi's
hotel project,
admitted
under oath at trial that he knew there was no
contamination on the Gran Havana site and that he knew
Samimi was using CCDC's false charge of toxic waste as a
negotiating tool against Gran Havana. Isn't that
corruption? A City employee lying for a developer?

Here's the unfolding story:

According to Cynthia Eldred's
letter (pages
17-26) to CCDC (she is the lawyer for the developer
who seized Gran Havana) the developer, Ramin Samimi, has
to date spent $23 million on this project. Now he is in
default on his contract with the City. Read the
draft Notice
of Default (pages 15-16) prepared for the CCDC Board
meeting tomorrow. They must decide between extending and
changing his contract or pulling the rug on him.

Samimi was contracted to close escrow (on the purchase
from the now City-condemned Gran Havana property) by
December 15, 2006 and to commence construction of a
hotel by January 16, 2006. He has done neither. That
escrow was due to close over 6 months ago! Try that one
in the real world of private real estate.

Mr. Samimi now has $23 million riding on the toss of a
coin at tomorrow's CCDC meeting. He is truly a
risk-taker. Or is he? Somehow I don't think so. I
suspect the fix has been in for a long time. We know he
has friends in high places.

Remember the
Iranian
immigrant, Kourosh Hangafarin, Dick Murphy
controversially
appointed to the Port Commission, widely believed to be
because of his extraordinary ability to raise big bucks
for Republican Party causes from the deep-pocketed San
Diego Iranian-American community? I am told Hangafarin
is Samimi's cousin. Read this
CityBeat article about Hangafarin's bizarre trip to
Cuba that got him fired from the Port.

So, Simimi has
$10,165,000 on deposit with CCDC for the acquisition of
the 5,000 square feet Gran Havana lot (which the City
now owns) and according to Cynthia Eldred, he spent $8
million on consulting and legal fees. This means that he
spent only $4,835,000 to acquire the other 35,000 square
feet. He offered Mesdaq a mere pittance for the Gran
Havana property, boasting that he would use CCDC to get
it for him.

In her letter
to CCDC (page 25), Ms. Eldred cites as evidence of
Mr. Samimi's "good faith effort to develop the
project" the fact that he has spent $23 million to
date. To expend such money without a guarantee of
success, she points out, would be "folly". I agree. Who
then is Mr. Samimi's friend at CCDC? The Project Manager
Eli Sanchez? His boss Mr. Allsbrook? Both? The whole
CCDC Board?

Why did CCDC appeal Mr. Mesdaq's successful court case?
The Agency had nothing to gain. Samimi had contracted
with CCDC to pay all the expenses, including acquisition
costs and litigation expenses. CCDC is not at risk for a
penny. And Samimi had already put the $10,165,000 on
deposit with CCDC. There must be a reason why CCDC
appealed.

I suspect that CCDC knew all along that Samimi was no
hotel developer, that he needed to find somebody to do
what he was contracted to do. He needed time. Did they
cover for him until he finally located such a hotel
developer? Read the
email (page
33) everybody was waiting for. It didn't take Eli
Sanchez long to get things rolling after that.

This vital June 5, 2007 email confirmed for Eli Sanchez
and CCDC that Samimi's proposed lessee, Hansji Hotels
Inc., had finally secured its contract with Marriott and
everything was a go. Sanchez got it docketed for the
CCDC Real Estate Committee June 13. They passed the buck
to a full CCDC Board meeting tomorrow.

Why would CCDC spend public money to help a private
developer when they had no monetary interest in the
case? It screams to high heaven of corruption!

Project Manager Eli Sanchez's staff report to the CCDC
Board tomorrow is taken almost word for word from
Cynthia Eldred's letter. Sanchez is a City-paid advocate
for Samimi.

David Allsbrook, Eli Sanchez' boss, is a long time
staffer with CCDC. He was
CCDC's manager of contracting and acquisitions
and managed the agency's "land assembly" efforts in the
East Village. He knows all the tricks. He is an expert
on the use of eminent domain and the use (and abuse?) of
the
Polanco Act, the legal tool used by Redevelopment
Agencies to clean up toxic waste
sites. His
wife is a real
estate agent with Prudential Realty (Neuman & Neuman)
and works in the downtown office.

This
extract from Gran Havana's attorney Vince
Bartolotta's court brief makes it very clear that CCDC,
acting on behalf of a private developer, forced Ahmed
Mesdaq, owner of Gran Havana, to spend $100,000 to
defend himself against a trumped up charge of toxic
waste.
Read the whole brief.

Who is going to stop this corruption from being
validated by the CCDC Board tomorrow? It is not too
late. Nancy Graham, President of CCDC, should intervene
and at least ask for a continuance until the matter can
be investigated. If not, the false toxic waste charge is
enough to launch an FBI investigation. The Feds don't
like their laws being abused.

If Nancy Graham does not act in time, Mayor Jerry
Sanders should intervene. Does he want another Sunroad,
maybe worse, on his hands?

The smell of corruption is already sticking to this
city. If Sanders does not act on Gran Havana he may
never be able to convince the credit agencies to
reinstate our credit rating, this side of a Chapter 9
Municipal bankruptcy.

This is a
video
interview with Ahmad Mesdaq, former owner of the
Gran
Havana cigar and coffee shop downtown. Ahmad had his
property taken from him by the City of San Diego using
eminent domain. The City gave it to Ramin Samimi.
The case has attracted national attention.

He asks for your support at
Wednesday's CCDC meeting where he hopes they will not give an extension to Samimi who has done nothing with the property. It is now
a parking lot. We owe him our support, it could happen
to any of us.

For those of you who really want to help and who really
care,
read this brief. It tells it all.

Why is the City helping this developer? He has already
lost his case, but the City is appealing it. Is this
another Sunroad?

The
top 20 feet of the too-tall Sunroad office building may
not be the only thing discussed at that infamous
December 19, 2006 meeting in the Mayor's
office. There may also have been the matter of an SDG&E substation
Sunroad was supposed to move to a new location.

Here is a short video I took last week. You can see why
this thing needs to be moved. It is a left-over from the
General Dynamics days and is now right in the middle of
the residential section of the redevelopment.

I talked to a number of residents and they are outraged
at the City for allowing such a dangerous eyesore, and
possible health hazard, to remain in their midst. It is
a clear danger to their children. You can almost reach
out and touch it through the very flimsy fence at the
recreation area. It is a dreadful accident waiting to
happen.
Sunroad became obligated to move this SDG&E transformer
through a
Mitigated Negative Declaration (LDR 41-0101) adopted by
the
City Council on
November 12, 2002,
Resolution 297294. The substation was supposed to be
relocated to location B on the map below. It is still at
location A. Unbelievable! What happens when you or I
perpetrate the slightest code violation on our house? A
City inspector is out with his citation book within the
hour.

Below is what Sanders is letting Sunroad get
away with. They are being allowed to put a parking structure
where the SDG&E substation is supposed to be.

The deepening Sunroad scandal is following a familiar
course: Sanders gave his "I
am not a crook" speech today. Here is the video
.

Unlike
Nixon, who was largely isolated in the White House back
in 1972, Sanders was able to muster almost the entire
law enforcement establishment behind him today.

What does that say about San Diego in 2007? That it is
far more corrupt than Washington was in 1972, that's
what. Look at them, Police Chief Lansdowne, Sherriff
Kolender and District Attorney Dumanis.

Chief Lansdowne seems to actually admire corrupt politicians.
Back on July 1, 2005 he shocked his own officers by
going to court, without being asked, to
testify in favor of somebody he hardly knew,
disgraced City Councilmember Michael Zucchet, at
Zucchet's corruption trial. Even Sanders, running for
Mayor at the time, condemned that one.

Then Sanders said this
.
Wow! What a city. Flanked by the Establishment-appointed
District Attorney, Bonnie Dumanis he said "I am confident that this
evaluation will conclude that I acted properly". Was
there ever a more disgraceful line-up of public
officials? It represents a complete breakdown of law
enforcement in this County. Of course they will
exonerate Sanders. He is one of them.

So now what? Well, I say start the recall right away.
What else can we do? Look at the above picture. It is
like they are defying us. The entire law enforcement
establishment of this County! They know Sanders is corrupt
and they are going to protect him!

It proved (Sanders has since admitted it on the Roger
Hedgecock Show) that a crucial meeting took place on
December 19, 2006. What happened at that meeting?
Here's what happened
.
Aaron Feldman, President of Sunroad, came to the Mayor's
office and succeeded in getting Mayor Sanders to
overrule the City's building inspector by instructing
the Director of Development Services, Marcella
Escobar-Eck, (long time City colleague of Tom Story, who
is now a VP with Sunroad) to personally sign the letter
to Sunroad lifting the City's Stop Work Order. The
City's duly appointed building inspector had refused to
do it. He is no longer with the City.

Now if that is not corrupt, what is? And the above
disgraceful line-up of top law enforcement officials
defend Mayor Sanders and blame the City Attorney for not
being as corrupt as they are! Sometimes I think this is
all just a bad dream.

Sunroad called a news conference yesterday and admitted
that it called it to warn off the City and Aguirre
.
Obviously it didn't work. Thank goodness for Mr.
Aguirre. I don't know how he keeps going under such a
relentless onslaught of sleaze - condoned, aided and
abetted by the very law enforcement officials who should
be on his side.

And Sunroad "is disappointed in the Mayor". He
hasn't done enough for them! It reminds me of all Dick
Murphy did for John Moores who then hung him out to dry.
Here is Sunroad's attorney yesterday expressing that
disappointment
.
Can you believe it?

Then watch Sunroad's attorney insist that Montgomery
Field is safe
.

The only thing we can do is recall the Mayor. The above
line-up has left us no choice. They have deprived us of
all legal recourse. It is nothing short of a legal coup d'é·tat.

No good will come until we are rid of Sanders. He has
corrupted everything he touches. The law enforcement
officials who (purely for Party loyalty?) stood up with
him today, should hang their heads in shame for the rest
of their lives. What an ignominious end to the long
career of Sheriff Bill Kolender. What a sad spectacle
to see such a longtime public servant stray so far from
the path of decency. It truly was a sad day for San
Diego.

Will this be called the "Toni Atkins Park"?. Will it be
Toni's monument to her "public service"? If so, then it
should have the word "shame" inscribed below
her
name.

Here is a video clip
from Sanders
2008 Budget signing
publicity gig on June 13, 2007. Note how Atkins
can hardly keep her hands off her idol, Sanders. I
thought she was going to kiss him. What had he done to make her so fawning and
obsequious?
Her name on a park in return for closing a winter
homeless shelter and for her vote on June 11th depriving the City Attorney of 14 city attorneys?

Following her June 11th vote to cut 14 city attorneys and following her much
publicized promise to uphold
Sanders' disgraceful veto
on the funding of a $465,000 homeless shelter, this
"Toni Atkins Park" item was rushed onto
the City Council agenda with unseemly haste. It received
all the necessary signatures on one day!! June 12th.
It was then hurried onto the Council Agenda as a
Supplementary Item. That is unheard of. A deal was
clearly struck.

"Fiscal Considerations: These actions will
appropriate a total of $411,200 to CIP-29-002.0,
Central Avenue Mini Park-Acquisition ..... contingent
upon receipt of a fully executed grant agreement, and
authorize an expenditure of a total of $520,000
from CIP-29-002.0, Central Avenue Mini Park-Acquisition,
for the acquisition of the 0.37 acre Caltrans
excess property for future park purposes."

Here is the Form
1472 that was expedited on June 12th. Notice the
date of all the Mayor's office signers - June 12th. Even the City
Comptroller obliged by signing a form
certifying
that the money was available.

Once my suspicions were aroused I went back over the
video of the Council meeting on June 11, 2006. I wanted
to see if Atkins had anything to say about cutting
Aguirre's 14 attorneys. She had said nothing. It
reminded me of Tony Young on January 9, 2007 when he
cast the deciding vote in favor of Manchester's Navy
Broadway. He never said a word all that long fateful
day. He just voted to uphold a 15 year old EIR. Guilt?

Nor did Atkins have anything to say about the winter
homeless shelter as she voted for Sanders' budget. Donna
Frye on the other hand could not hold back the tears as
she witnessed the callousness of those around her on the
bench. Here is a short video clip
of her pain, for caring about other human beings.

Look again at
the disgraceful document Atkins supported. Sanders
actually wrote: "I do not believe that it is appropriate
to use General Fund monies for social service programs
..... I believe there is more appropriate use of
taxpayer dollars". And "liberal" Toni Atkins supported
him 100%! We know what to expect from him, a rightwing
conservative. But Atkins!

After several of her colleagues had spoken about the
budget and after she had recovered herself, Donna made a
final valiant effort to rescue the winter homeless
shelter. Her extraordinary passion moved Madaffer,
against Madaffer's better judgment as he explained, to
second her motion. It was a separate motion from the
main budget item.

Here is the video
of Donna laying out her motion and the subsequent vote.

The idea was to make every effort to raise the $465,000
elsewhere and pay back the reserve. Peters, Hueso and
Faulconer voted "no" but the other five passed it.
Sanders has vetoed it. Atkins has told the press she
will support the Sanders veto. Why is she pledged to
reverse her June 11th vote? I am sure she will deny any
connection with the mini park. How will she explain how
her sweetheart park deal got expedited in one day?

Or was it payback for going along with the Mayor in
gutting Aguirre's department?

City's
building inspector fired for not repealing Sunroad's
Stop Work order? 06/15/07

The Mayor recently confirmed on KOGO radio that a City
building inspector refused to sign a December 21, 2006,
modified stop work order that allowed weather-proofing
of the Centrum building ..... today the City Attorney
spoke with the inspector and he confirmed to Aguirre
that he refused to sign the proposed modified
stop work notice because it went far beyond
weatherizing the building. The inspector no
longer works at the City and is employed in San
Francisco.

This feels more and more like Watergate. The lies keep
tumbling out.

Was a City building inspector fired for
not repealing the Sunroad stop work order? Where is Ted
Sexton? Why did Ronne Froman suddenly quit?

So now we know what the taking by eminent domain of the
Gran Havana building at 5th & J downtown (by CCDC) was
all about. For a relatively small campaign contribution
an aggressive developer can get to use government's
police power to intimidate owners and acquire valuable
developable properties. It sure beats paying market
value.

La Jolla based developer
Ramin Samimi (a prominent member of the
San Diego Iranian community)
through his 5th and J Limited Partnership, gave $10,000
to the local GOP central committee in 2004. That
committee then gave $7,800 to Jim Madaffer's City
Council re-election campaign. That is how you buy the
police power of government. Doug Manchester gave $50,000
to the Lincoln Club in 2006, which immediately gave
$50,000 to Sanders' Prop C campaign (Prop C was the
"outsourcing" initiative that meant a lot to Sanders).

Jim Madaffer is chairman of the City's Land Use and
Housing Committee and a big supporter of
"redevelopment". His influence over the CCDC is
legendary. So Samimi got the Gran Havana site and Doug
Manchester got five City Councilors to ignore the
seismic fault under Navy Broadway. I will never forgive
Tony Young for that immoral vote. I pick on him because
he knew better and better was expected of him.

Now it turns out that Ramin Samimi never intended to
build a hotel on the site. And CCDC knew it. He is in
the business of acquiring ownership of valuable land and
renting it out to real developers. He is doing exactly
the same as McMillin, who is leasing valuable land he
acquired from the City for $1, to the
“Nickelodeon Resorts by Marriott”.
Having got CCDC (and
Madaffer?) to acquire the Gran Havana property for him
(using the City's police power of eminent domain),
Samimi will now be the ground landlord to
Hansji Hotels.

Hansji Hotels intend to build and operate a 350 room
Marriott hotel (see the rendering opposite). That should
bring in a nice rent check to Samimi.

BUT it will require a "bait-and-switch" action by
CCDC to the original Disposition and Development
Agreement (DDA). That action was deferred from the CCDC
Real Estate Sub-Committee meeting on June 13, 2007 (they
got cold feet) to a full CCDC board on June 27, 2007. I
shall be there with my trusty YouTube camera.

If the CCDC board does not amend the DDA, Samimi will be
in default of his agreement with the City. HE was
supposed to build the hotel, not rent the deal to a
third party.

You will remember Ahmad Mesdaq's
spirited fight against the City's eminent domain taking
of his 5th and J Gran Havana property. Ahmed is a great
guy. His father was a general in the Afghan air force
who fought to repel the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Threatened with death if he remained in Afghanistan,
General Mesdaq sought and obtained political asylum in
the United States for himself and his family in 1983.

I have no doubt that Ahmad will put up a spirited fight
at CCDC on June 27th, just as his father did with the
Ruskies. But I'm sure he would appreciate some support.
The CCDC board must not be allowed to approve this
"bait-and-switch" change to
the original DDA.

If they do, I will be convinced they were complicit in
this misuse of the power of eminent domain from the
beginning. They took property from a hard-working
citizen and gave it to a campaign contributor of a
powerful and unscrupulous City Councilor, Jim Madaffer.

Here is the
supporting documentation for that aborted CCDC Real
Estate Committee meeting on June 13, 2007. It will
probably be substantially the same for June 27th. Here
also is the
Trial
Brief for Mesdaq's 2005 suit against the
Redevelopment Agency. It provides an excellent summary
of this whole nasty business.

I went to Mike Aguirre's press conference on the 13th
floor of City Hall yesterday. It promised to be a big
one, and it was. As I set up my little home video camera
I joked with the big boys to move over that YouTube was
here. Gene Cubbison (NBC 7/39) quipped "oh, oh, we're
going global". Seriously though, the Internet is a
beautiful thing and is doing wonderful things for
democracy.

Mike started out by telling us that he discovered
Sunroad documents in Ted Sexton's airport office. These
documents had been illegally moved from Sexton's city
office to his airport office (Sexton is on loan to the
City from the Airport Authority).

He went on to tell us that he has been told, apparently
by the airport authority's legal counsel, that there are
more Sunroad documents in Sexton's airport office, but
they will not be turned over to the City Attorney and
that Ted Sexton has left town. Wow!

I have posted below the various documents Aguirre has
obtained, as they become appropriate in my narrative.
They really do make a liar out of Sanders.

First Mike held up a thick wad of architect's drawings,
the entire plans for Sunroad 12, discovered in the
office of a guy Sanders said had nothing to do with
Sunroad.

Then Mike dealt with a previously
withheld March
2, 2007 letter from Sanders to Alan Bersin, Chairman
of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority. In
this letter Sanders pretended that he knew nothing about
the Notice of
Hazard to Aviation issued by the FAA on August 11,
2006. He said that he had been "unable to get a clear
analysis of whether or not the building is a safety risk
to aviation". What a whopper. I guess he thought
that letter was safely beyond Aguirre's reach in
Sexton's airport office. No wonder Sexton left town in a
hurry, Sanders must be livid at him.

The big lie to the people of San Diego is Sanders'
repeated statements that Sexton was not brought in to help with Sunroad, when the entire letter is all about the Sunroad.
Sanders' was requesting help in solving Sunroad and
wanting "changes to operations or notices that would
eliminate the risk". Here is
Bersin's reply thanking Sanders for his letter "in
which you request assistance from the San Diego County
Regional Airport Authority to help resolve issues
surrounding the Sunroad Enterprises building near
Montgomery Field".

Nowhere does Bersin mention the "wider issues" Sanders
is now peddling.

He could have solved the safety problem in a
heartbeat by simply revoking the illegal permit he
issued on July 7, 2006. But he could hardly do that when
it was he himself who issued it. Nobody else could have,
not even Escobar-Eck. Nor did anybody else authorize the
"winterizing" nonsense on December 21, 2006, two days
after Feldman's visit to his office. Again, Escobar-Eck
would never have signed without Sanders' authority.
Otherwise he would have fired her long ago. And Froman
knew that!

What particularly galled Aguirre was that on the very
day they stood together on the same platform, there on
the 13th floor, May 18, 2007, the day Sanders
told the
people
that he took full responsibility and would conduct an
investigation, his hireling from the Airport Authority,
Ted Sexton, was busy
finalizing arrangements for a secret meeting with
the FAA in Fort Worth, Texas. Now that is devious
and dishonest.

Here is the
PowerPoint presentation this Ted Sexton, Vice
President, Regulated Operations, San Diego County
Regional Airport Authority and Jim Barwick, Director,
Real Estate Assets, City of San Diego, had prepared for
a presentation to the FAA for four days later on May 22,
2007. Notice that the proposal said nothing about
lowering the building height to 160 feet, only to "Modify
Flight Procedures to restrict circling approaches north
of Runway 5/23", exactly where the Sunroad building
is located.

Why else was Sexton hired? As VP for "Regulated
Operations" he knows this stuff backwards. Sanders hired
him as a lobbyist for Sunroad, on City money.

This would be a good time to view the 9 minute video
of Mike's lawyerly presentation of the above evidence.
Between the video and the above documents you will have
a very clear idea of what actually happened.

Mike then leads us through the meeting with the FAA in
Texas. He notes
the email that ties Ted Sexton to Tom Story and the
"data"
Sexton shared with Sunroad, but which was not shared
with the City Attorney. Sanders has been telling the
media that he is fully supportive of Aguirre's civil
lawsuit against Sunroad, while all the while withholding
documents and "data' from him. Is our Mayor actually
working against the City in a civil lawsuit by helping a
defendant who happens to be a developer? It seems that
way.

At the very moment that Sanders was vehemently denying
that he had borrowed Ted Sexton from the
Airport Authority to lobby the FAA on behalf of Sunroad,
and at the very moment he was telling the
people who live south of Montgomery Field that "nothing
could be further from the truth" (a favorite
expression of Sainz, which gives you some idea of who writes
this stuff) Ted Sexton was writing
this email to the FAA.

Note the date, May 30, long after Sanders'
May 18 press
conference.
Note that Sanders only wanted to eliminate "any
public perception of a hazard" not the hazard
itself.

It is clear therefore that up until just a few days ago,
until he got caught by Aguirre, Sanders was using
a borrowed top
ranking Airport Authority
official, to get the FAA to change its rules in order
to accommodate the illegal Sunroad building. At the same
time he was telling the people of San Diego the exact
opposite. It was his promise never to tell such lies that
got him elected.

Aguirre then summarizes the situation, starting with
Lansdowne's refusal to serve the warrant on Tom Story,
Sanders' failure to disclose what the FAA told them in
Texas, whether Sanders authorized the July 7, 2006
permit and the sudden resignation Monday of the person
who was supposed to get to the bottom of it all, Ronne
Froman.

Mike admitted that the establishment, the Mayor, Police
Chief and District Attorney, have tied the hands of the
City Attorney and are refusing to take action against
their establishment friends. It made for sobering
listening. This city is in deep political trouble.

Watch the video
as Aguirre explains the present situation.

One of the documents that intrigued me was
this one. In it, Airport staff confirm that "the
City was obligated by State law to send all proposed
projects affected by the ALUCPs within their
jurisdiction to the ALUC for a Consistency Determination".
Not only was the July 7, 2006 permit illegal but the
Substantial Conformance Review was illegal.

Mike finished up by appealing to the media to "dig
deep". He pointed out that we have a prosecutorial
problem in San Diego and that "corruption, at least
right now, has won out".

This the final portion of his press conference
.
It should give any San Diegan cause for concern.

Donna Frye thought Aguirre's press conference was so
important that she actually left her City Council seat
and came upstairs to support Mike and make some points
of her own, particularly about the public's right to
know and the lack of information from the Mayor. She was
particularly appalled at the Mayor's lack of response to
her numerous inquiries over many months concerning
Sunroad and the known safety issue over there.

Here is the video
of her passionate presentation.

Fred Sainz, the Mayor's PR man, took the podium after Aguirre
left, to take advantage of the five cameras
present (not counting mine). He tried to play the whole
thing down and suggested that Aguirre was hyping it to
get back at Sanders for firing 14 City Attorney's.

I think it goes much deeper than that. There is no doubt
the Mayor lied to the people of San Diego. And Fred
Sainz will have a tough time spinning the Mayor out of
this one.

Here is the
CEQA Process Flow Chart
and here
is the
Notice of Preparation (NOP) for the proposed
Landfill Remediation EIR. Notice that it says "Excavation
of the solid waste and burn ash will remove a potential
source of groundwater contaminants and reduce
exposure to environmental and human receptors".

Now look at the airport site and the McMillin/SpongeBob
sites together..

The McMillin site is essentially worthless with a toxic
dump so close by. The airport authority is estimating
$67 million to clean up its site. Who is it cleaning it
for? The $67 million cleanup will benefit McMillin. It
will make their hotel lease possible, especially if it
involves a water park and children. It seems McMillin's
lobbyists have been busy.

In a
U-T article todaystaff writer
Steve Schmidt "forgot" to mention the $67 million for
cleanup. So I got the
airport budget and took a look for myself. It is on
page 30 of 36.

(Note: because public agencies, such as the airport
authority and the redevelopment agency, have more money
than sense, the budget
file takes forever to download due to unnecessary
background colors. It is not your computer. It is the
way they have configured the file - almost as if they
don't want you to download it.)

NTC
Landfill Remediation

FY
- 2007

$2,630,255

It
accounts for almost the entire "Airside" capital
budget for 2008 and 2009 and is by far the
biggest capital item on the airport's five year
capital plan.

The Airport plans to pay for the $67 million
remediation from $70,535,925 Airport
Revenue Bonds to be issued in 2008 and
$45,662,240 to be issued in 2009.

FY
- 2008

$38,621,787

FY
- 2009

$25,747,858

Total:

$67,000,000

There should be a public discussion about who
should pay for this cleanup and how it will affect
neighboring properties. This landfill and toxic dump was
a product of the Naval Training Center as a whole. It
seems to me that its cleanup should be spread over the NTC property as a whole. The economic impact on the
airport should be considered by the Airport Authority
before accepting responsibility for the total cost of
the cleanup.

The $67 million must inevitably come from the revenues
of the airport. It will mean increased fees to the
public and a squeezing of other areas of airport
service.

No private company would have accepted ownership of this
site and the accompanying liability for its toxic
remediation, especially not McMillin & Co. So the City
literally dumped it on a public agency. Now the
traveling public will have to pay.

The City should have determined the cost of all
remediation associated with the redevelopment project
before deeding a single parcel to anybody. The cost
of toxic remediation for the entire original NTC land
should have been determined and made to "run with the
land" i.e. it should have been written into the
grant deed of every parcel as a monetary encumbrance on
each parcel, according to its percentage of the total.

The fact that this was not done is another example of
how the city's Redevelopment Agency is operated for the
benefit of developers. This should be addressed by the
public in next year's Council elections. The four new
2008 Councilors must be clearly tasked with correcting
this particular area of city misgovernment - the
Redevelopment Agency.

According to innumerable press conferences and media
interviews by Jerry Sanders he and Jim Waring were
strictly neutral on Sunroad. Campaign money never played
a part in the permit process.

However, here are the headings of three emails referring
to meetings between Mayor Sanders and Sunroad's
President, Aaron Feldman and its Vice President Tom
Story, in the Mayor's office and a meeting
between Jim Waring and Aaron Feldman in Jim Waring's
office. Whatever could they have been talking about, the
weather?

The December 19, 2006 meeting in the Mayor's office is
particularly significant. December 19th was a Tuesday.
The following Thursday, December 21, 2006, Marcella
Escobar-Eck issued
this
response to Sunroad's request to lift the stop work
order. She duly lifted it. Her boss, Mayor Sanders, told
her to.

It is safe to assume that the December 19th meeting in
the Mayor's office was a direct approach from Sunroad to
the Mayor to lift the stop work order. He did exactly as
requested. Developers such as Sunroad own this Mayor.
How many other big developers have this kind of access?
Probably all of them. They put him there.

In an attempt to preempt Mike Aguirre's press conference
today, Sanders sent an email circular to the media
around 3:00 P.M. Here is an extract:

"In tonight's story, Mike Aguirre will allege that I
was trying to fashion a new landing pattern to the south
of the airport in order to accommodate the building's
developer. Nothing can be further from the truth. Let me
state emphatically that there won't be any alternative
landing approaches at Montgomery Field. No one that
broke the law should be accommodated. The status quo
will remain in place until the building is reduced in
size."

Now read
Sanders' letter to
the FAA dated May 18, 2007. How quickly he forgets.
He said in that letter: "my staff has put forward a
proposal ..." for "... aircraft to circle to the
south". Now he denies saying that. He says
"Nothing can be further from
the truth". It would appear that "the truth"
is not something Jerry Sanders is very familiar with.

In summary: it is clear that Mayor Sanders has been an
advocate for the illegal Sunroad building from the
beginning. It is clear that he instructed Ms.
Escobar-Eck, Director of Development Services, to lift the October 27, 2006
Stop Work Order.
It is clear that he brought over
Ted Sexton on loan from the Airport Authority on
April 1st to craft the proposal he put forward in his
letter to the FAA on May 18, 2007.

This is the worst Mayor in San Diego's history. He says
one thing and does another. He is only interested in
corporate welfare for his campaign backers. Thank
goodness for Mike Aguirre. The truth will eventually
out, despite the Sanders lying machine.

It's now full
steam ahead at Navy Broadway - and damn the torpedoes.
06/07/07

This is similar to Sunroad's attorney, Barbara Lichman's
strident defiance of the FAA. In Manchester's case his
attorney, Michael Levinson, is defying the Coastal
Commission and even threatening to sue them if they try
to enforce the State's coastal jurisdiction.

Levinson is quoting the Federal Coastal Zone Management
Act's (CZMA) definition of the Coastal Zone: "excluded
from the coastal zone are lands the use of which is by
law subject solely to the discretion of, or which is
held in trust by, the Federal Government its officers or
agents". This pits Federal Law against State law.

So the developers' gloves are off at both Navy Broadway
and Sunroad. Manchester will now start construction and
damn the regulatory torpedoes.

This super-aggressiveness of the San Diego developers is
intimately related to the super-permissiveness of the
Sanders' administration.

How would you like to own a 66 year ground lease for $1
per year on this choice 17 acre Harbor Drive waterfront
parcel and rent it out to the operators of a 650-room
resort hotel with a 100,000 square-foot water park? Is
your name McMillin?

"The first “Nickelodeon Resorts by Marriott” property
is expected to be a 650-room resort at Liberty Station
in San Diego, which will incorporate a 100,000
square-foot water park and activity deck complex
featuring a variety of pools and interactive
attractions. Designed by Gensler, the well-known
international architectural firm, the resort is expected
to break ground in January 2008 and open in early 2010."

Here is the official Parcel Map for the site, showing 6
parcels totaling a net of 17.12 acres. Not bad for $1
per year.

Here is the
Memorandum of Lease between the City's Redevelopment
Agency and McMillin, filed on April 30, 2002.

You will notice that on page 2, par. 5 it says that a
copy of the full lease is on file at the Redevelopment
Agency. So I went downtown today and read the full
Lease. I paid 75 cents (almost as much as McMillan pays
for a year's rent) to copy
three pages,
particularly the page showing the rent at $1 per year.

Most of the other pages describe the terrible things
that will happen in the event McMillan fails to make his
rent payment on time and how the City will recover the
property in the event of his default. Normal stuff in an
abnormal lease.

Finally here is
an article in the
U-Tlast Saturday.
It tells a lot about the developers and the
hotel business, but it "forgot" to mention the
thing of most interest to its San Diego readers: "how
much does the long-suffering San Diego tax-payer get out
of this?" Zilch. And this is only a very small part
of the infamous NTC giveaway, throughout which the
Union-Tribune, remained
mostly silent.

The taxpayers of no city should have to endure the
billions of dollars in giveaways the politicians and
staff of this city perpetrated on its citizens. The
people of this city must find a way to bind all future
candidates for elected office, with a legally
enforceable contract, that they will protect and defend
the public purse and not pander to developers and
unions, as their predecessors have so shamelessly done over
the last two decades.

Surely, of all the charter changes we think we need, this is
the most important.

Attorney's for CAASD told me that "Federal law
requires that a builder send a formal notice (Form
7461-1) to the FAA 30 days before applying for a
building permit. The purpose, of course, is to
trigger FAA reviews early enough to re-design. It is
the BUILDER’S responsibility – not the City’s."

The CAASD complaint points out that Sunroad could be
liable for $25,000 per day in penalties, up to a maximum
of $400,000. Sunroad may already be facing that maximum
fine
as $400,00 represents only 16 days.
I wonder if their hyper-aggressive aviation attorney,
Barbara Lichman, will cough up the $400,000. After all
it is she who has been advising them that they have
nothing to fear from the FAA, that it is a toothless
tiger.

Reading the CAASD complaint is useful because it
highlights the important facts in this case. It also has
very good Exhibits. Here, for example, is Sunroad's
original
application for the Substantial Conformance Review (SCR)
and here is their
application for the grading permit. This is the
first time I have seen the actual applications. I notice
however, that CAASD failed to locate the application for the
July 7, 2006 building
permit. That could be informative. It would show what
the City knew and when it knew it.

These applications are important because they define
the land Sunroad intended to develop, by showing
the Parcel Number, the Parcel Map and the Assessor's
Parcels Numbers. The base zoning of the identified land is thus confirmed as CC-1-3. Below is an excerpt from
the City's Official Zoning Map. The orange areas are
zoned CC-1-3.

According to the zoning regulations,
zone CC-1-3
"is intended to accommodate development
with an auto orientation". Here is a list of the
actual uses allowed.
But the most important restriction
is: "The maximum
building height for the CC-1-3 zone is 45 feet tall".

That restriction has been illegally waived by Mayor
Sanders' staff. That cannot stand.

Today, in an
editorial, the Union-Tribune covered for Sanders and
his staff regarding the Sunroad building. Bob Kittle,
the presumed writer, said
"Astonishingly,
city officials issued a building permit for the unsafe
office tower without consulting the FAA."

"Without consulting the FAA" is grossly
misleading.

Here is an
email showing that Dan Munch, Sunroad's architect,
spoke to Mayor's staff John Cruz and Jeannette Temple
regarding "Centrum,
FAA Obstruction Evaluation" as early as April 3, 2006.
Here is a
letter
from Karen McDonald of the FAA dated June 20, 2006
where she gives the timeline: "Sunroad
submitted a 7460-1 to the FAA on April 5, 2006, ASN
number 2006-AWP-1638-OE. FAA responded April 24, 2006
with a notice of presumed hazard". Here is the
FAA Notice.

Ms. McDonald was writing on June 20, 2006 to remind
Sunroad and the City that the "60 days for resolution"
was about to expire four days later on June 24, 2006,
after which she would be issuing a full
"Determination of Hazard to Air Navigation". She gave
her phone number in LA and suggested they call her if
they had any questions. The Mayor's staff went ahead and
issued the permit anyway. They would never have done
that without instructions from the very top - Sanders
himself. It would have been suicide for them to do
otherwise. That's why he is protecting them - they would
surely turn on him.

Yet the Union-Tribune would
have us believe that the Mayor's staff merely issued
this permit to
Sunroad on July 7, 2006
"without consulting the FAA". The Mayor's staff
issued that permit in spite of the FAA.
The "authority" for that illegal permit came from
Sanders himself and the U-T is now protecting him.

I don't know whether it was just a happy coincidence or
whether it was planned, but it is odd that the U-T ran
their piece on the Sunroad Harbor Island project at this
time. It gave Sanders a golden opportunity to look good
condemning the Lindberg Sunroad as "dead on arrival"
while still protecting those who issued the Montgomery
Sunroad permit.

The City does not have land use jurisdiction over Harbor
Island, the Port Commission does. Both the U-T and
Sanders forgot to mention that little tidbit. Nice PR
work guys.

One other thing. I found
this entry in a Sunroad Cycle Issues Report. It
relates to another part of the same Centrum project. It
says: "The maximum
building height for the CC-1-3 zone is 45 feet tall.
Buildings A-North and A-South are over height. The
master plan identifies Land Development Code CC-1-3 zone
as the regulatory authority for the height in the
Development Standards, page IV-7."

This is official confirmation of what I have believed
from the beginning: the legally zoned height for that
12 story Sunroad building is 45 feet.
Therefore it is not just the top 20 feet that must come
down, the whole building must come down. The Mayor's
staff not only did not have authority to exceed
the 160 feet set by the FAA, they did not have
authority to exceed that set by the City's Land
Development Code. That building is simply illegal.

I went to Mike Aguirre's Community Forum last night in
the Council Chambers expecting to be updated on the
major City law suits particularly the pension rollbacks
case (upon which I have not given up and neither has
Mike). I never guessed this was the night he would lower
the boom on the Mayor. Aguirre finally discovered the
real Jerry Sanders.

Here is a
shortened version of the CityTV video

It speaks of secret meetings between City staff and
Sunroad and the Mayor's open advocacy for a building
that has been officially declared a hazard to people's
lives. Our Mayor, Jerry Sanders, secretly advocated for
an unsafe building. Unbelievable!

I spoke to Mike afterwards and he was clearly distressed
at having been let down so badly by somebody he
considered a friend. Mike only discovered yesterday that
Sanders had been telling him one thing and doing the
exact opposite behind his back. That is always hard to
take. I sometimes marvel at how trusting, almost naive,
Mike can be. With all his external toughness he could be
taken in by a smoothie like Sanders.

But thank goodness that's all over now. Readers of my
blog know how much it has bothered me over this past 18
months. I could never understand what Aguirre saw in
Sanders, apparently he actually trusted him.

Mike's final break with Sanders will have huge
implications for next year's City Council elections. The
line between quality of life and developer greed is once
again clear. Sanders is a mere shill for the developers.
He cares nothing for the ordinary citizen. Mike on the
other hand is all about the ordinary citizen and good
government.

The rift between Mike and Donna Frye can now be
repaired. I am sure it bothered Donna every bit as much
as it bothered me and others, probably more, that Mike
could not see through Sanders. Maybe it was a man thing.
Maybe Mike enjoyed the togetherness of these two manly
types running the City. Whatever it was it could not
last. Mike is still a Bobby Kennedy-style dreamer, while
Sanders is all about self and money.

Let's hope we can get four like-minded people to run for
City Council - and win. Together with the ever-faithful
Donna Frye we will have the five votes to defeat the "what's
in it for me" crowd at City Hall. The City Council
and Administration is about public service, not a
business opportunity. Aguirre will be a great example to
the next generation of City Councilors, now that he has
come back to his Bobby Kennedy "good government" roots.

Back in 1996 Barbara
Warden won this seat unopposed in the March primary,
receiving only 25,453
votes. Again in 2004 in the March primary Brian Maeinschein ran
unopposed and got elected on 33,024
votes. 2000 was a little better. There were
34,887 votes cast in the
March primary with Brian Maeinschein receiving
12,047 or 34.53%
and Tom Cleary receiving 9,613
or 27.55%.
Maeinschein easily beat Cleary in the November runoff
receiving 38,299 or 62.61%
to Cleary's 22,876 or 37.39% of the 61,175
votes cast.

So this has not been a very heavily contested seat over
the years. But 2008 will be different. Carl DeMaio and
his business backers see it as an opportunity to grab a
seat on the City Council. Political party money, mostly
Republican, will flow freely. It has happened
elsewhere, especially in District 2 in 2005/06. A seat
on the City Council is now worth a lot of money to many
types of businesses, not just developers.

As of May 1, 2007 there are 576,400
registered voters in the City of San Diego.
221,947 or 38.5% are
Democrats and 190,659
or 33.1% are Republicans. 137,267
or 23.8% are undeclared. That's a lot of independents up
for grabs. Unfortunately many of them don't vote.
Nevertheless they are the best defense against big party
money. Neither the Repubs, the Dems nor Labor can reach
those 137,267
independents, except maybe with TV ads. Those glossy "member
communications" are not
going to do the trick.

If only a small number of that 23.8% would sit up and
pay attention to their deteriorating quality of life -
the rush to densification without infrastructure. If
they would just read their own Community Plans,
imperfect as they are, they would see that the cart is
constantly being placed before the horse - developers
being allowed, even urged, to build their massive
projects without the roads to service them. The result
is LA-style gridlock.

The Mayor and City Council only became full-time in
1974. We finally got District elections in 1988 but the
Councilmembers spend their days huddled together in
close quarters on the 10th Floor, in permanent breach of
the Brown Act - the way they like it.

When was the last time you were in your Councilmembers'
office? Go to the 10th Floor any day and you will see a
constant parade of "suits" (lobbyists) going in to see
the person you thought you elected to look after your
interests.

I believe each City Councilor should have their main
office in their District and only go downtown to
meetings. They should be a visible presence in the
Communities and be available to their constituents every
day, not just at election time.

A good City Councilor should be a bridge to City Hall,
not part of it. We have enough bureaucrats down there.
Maybe we will find some genuine community-minded people
to represent us in 2008. The fact that there are
137,267 or 23.8% of the
city's registered voters, not interested in what big
money has to say, gives me great hope.

The community folks know they are being sold down the
river at City Hall. This time they may look for real
community-oriented candidates, not "suits" on glossy
mailers.

Regular readers of my blog will agree that I am a big
supporter of the City Council as an institution,
while often critical of individual Councilmembers. I am
therefore keenly interested in who will fill the four
City seats up for grabs next year. They are Districts 1,
3, 5 and 7. All four have termed-out Councilmembers,
which creates a real opportunity.

The four outgoing members, Peters, Atkins, Maienschein
and Madaffer, weakened by financial scandals, were
content to serve out the remainder of their terms as
quietly as possible. That gave an unfair advantage to
the strong Mayor experiment.

I opposed Prop F, the strong Mayor initiative, and I
still do. I fear it will diminish citizen participation
and lead to boss politics and cronyism. Everything I
have seen so far reaffirms that fear. The Sanders
administration is aggressively centralizing power in the
Mayor's Office, tightening the grip of his political donors
on City Hall.

It is essential that the voters elect strong-minded City
Councilors who will stand up to the strong Mayor, both in
person and in concept. The 2008 candidates must possess
a strong respect for the City Council as an
institution.

The first Council area to show clear battle lines is
District 5.

Mitz Lee
will challenge fellow republican
Carl DeMaio for that safe Republican seat. DeMaio is
a close ally of Mayor Sanders and a severe critic of the
City Council. Lee on the other hand made her School
Board reputation by hard work and for standing up to
Superintendents Alan Bersin and Carl Cohn. She will be
well able for Sanders.

She has plenty experience dealing with high testosterone
executives. Carl Cohn, Bersin's
successor as School Superintendent, doesn't believe in
too much consulting with his elected Board.
One result is that the School District now has two
official logos, one with the word "Unified" and one
without. The irony seems to be lost on Cohn.

Lee is considering hiring Schuman Hoy &
Associates, with offices on
Girard Ave in La Jolla, as her campaign consultants.
John Hoy and Bob Schuman are
professional Republicans who briefly got mixed up with
Tom DeLay and Enron on the national stage during the
energy deregulation days. That dubious connection may
have got started during the 1996 Republican Convention
in San Diego. City Hall watchers will mostly remember
them for their involvement with former City Councilman
Byron Wear.

Is it possible for a
Republican to get elected without developer money? Who
will back Mitz Lee? Does Schuman Hoy
automatically mean Byron
Wear-style developer money?

If Lee and DeMaio split the vote it is just conceivable
that a grassroots Democrat could win 50% in the June
primary. But there seems no chance a Democrat could win
a runoff in November. Therefore it is a contest between
these two very different Republicans.

DeMaio will need a better reason for being on the City
Council than, I suspect, using it as a springboard for
Mayor in 2012. He seems more at home on the executive
side, perhaps he should just run for mayor in 2008.

Judging by her performance on the School Board, Mitz Lee
would be a more natural legislator. It needs patience
and thoughtfulness. And party affiliation should be less
important than a strong commitment to quality of life.
However, adherence to environmental laws means a
constant battle with developers. Which side will she be
on?

It is time
for the City Council to revoke the
Sunroad permit. 05/25/07

Chapter 12, Article 1, Section 3 of the Land
Development Code clearly states that it is unlawful to "maintain
or allow the existence of any condition that creates apublic nuisance". The
Municipal Code goes on:

"The issuance or granting of any development permit
... does not constitute a permit for ... any
violation of any of the provisions of the Land
Development Code." It then makes it abundantly clear
that: "Development permits ...presuming
to give authority to violate ... the provisions of the
Land Development Code .... are not valid."

Even a cursory examination of the Sunroad permit makes
it abundantly clear that Sanders' staff approved levels
of density far in excess of anything allowed by
the site's zoning. The permit is therefore void on its face. It
was never valid to begin with.

Under the Municipal Code it is the City Manager who must
revoke a permit that has been issued (wittingly or
unwittingly) in violation of the Land Development
Code. But as we all know the Mayor is now the City
Manager. It was his staff that issued this invalid
permit. Who is going to revoke it? Jim Waring? Ronne
Froman? Waring thinks the City should be a neutral
party. Yes, he actually said that.

I believe that the City Council should initiate the permit revocation process
because
the Mayor acted ultra vires. The
people can no longer tolerate a situation where the
Mayor and his staff can thumb their collective noses at
land-use law. The legislative body that made that law, City
Council, must find a way to enforce it. Otherwise we
have anarchy.

There are two grounds for revocation: (1) the building
is now officially designated a "public nuisance", and
the developer has steadfastly refused to correct it; (2)
irrespective of height that building is way out of compliance
with FARs and development standards for that particular site.
The permit is invalid and
those who issued it must be fired.

If I can readily identify glaring breaches of zoning laws, surely City staff were fully aware of the
illegalities when they issued the permit.

The City Council should not wait to see if Ronne Froman
will "discover" this gross misapplication of the City's
development laws, contained in
Chapter 11, Article 3, Section 2of the Municipal Code. After all Jim Waring works
for her.

The Council has the legislative authority to order the
Mayor to comply with the City's Land Development Code.
That means ordering the Mayor to revoke this invalid
permit. It not only has the authority, it has a
responsibility to do so.

Apart from the appalling risk to human life, the City
Council is the sole guardian of the people's money.
Sunroad involves a minimum of $45 million. An airplane
accident at this building would involve the City in
untold liability. The City Council must act. Every day
that goes by, with the City Council allowing that permit
to stand, weakens the City's defense in the inevitable
law suits that will flow from this illegal building.

Jerry Sanders assured the San Diego voters that service
levels would not suffer from his budget cuts. Elected by
the business community, he was going to show these
wasteful bureaucrats how to run a city. Budget savings
would be achieved through Business Process Reengineering
(BPR). He had done it all at Red Cross and United Way.
The people bought his aw-shucks smile and voted for the
guy in droves.

But Sanders is, first and foremost, a political animal.
He knows that the ability to reach into a department and
cut where it hurts is a very powerful weapon. The
responsible official, elected or otherwise, will scream
for mercy. That's real power.

Andrea Tevlin, the Independent Budget Analyst
(independently) attempted to address that potential
abuse of power. She introduced the following budget
authority ordinance on February 5, 2007:

"Section 14. Budget change authority granted to the
Mayor requires City Council approval if such action is
expected to result in reducing, substantially or
materially, altering or eliminating a program or service
level being provided to the community, based upon the
Fiscal Year 2007 Budget."

It passed.
The vote was 5 to 3 against the
Mayor on its first reading. Aguirre supported
Sanders. The second reading was scheduled for March 5,
2007.

In the meantime Scott Peters persuaded Tony "what's in
it for me" Young to support the following "compromise":

"Any cumulative reduction in spending resulting from
Mayor action in an amount of 10% or $4 million, which
ever is less, in a particular department will require an
amendment to the Appropriation Ordinance by the City
Council."

Amid back-room negotiations and
back-scratching, the matter was continued to April 10th
. On April 6th Mike Aguirre issued his "no bright line"
opinion:

"As this review illustrates, there is no bright
line to draw in the absence of specific facts that
determine exactly where the Mayor’s and the Council’s
authority begins and ends in all City fiscal matters".

That written opinion must be now keeping
Aguirre awake at night. Fortunately, at the actual
Council hearing on April 10th, he raised sufficient
doubt in the Council's mind regarding Section 11.1 of
the City Charter (whether the City Council can delegate
responsibility for raising and spending taxpayer money)
that they again referred it for further study. And there
it stands today.

A working group of City officials, led by CFO Jay
Goldstone and IBA Andrea Tevlin, is meeting weekly in an
effort to reach a consensus on language that would give
the Mayor appropriate budgetary flexibility without
arming him with the excessive political power he craves
and has shown every indication of using. The group is
scheduled to report to the Budget & Finance Committee on
July 11, 2007.

Now, it looks as though
the City Attorney may become the first and most
spectacular victim of the Mayor's budgetary blackmail.
Sanders wants to cut 17 attorneys from Aguirre's staff.
It is hard to see how that would not have an impact on
service levels. Of course it will. The truth is that
Sanders wants to clear the City Attorney's office of
public-serving attorneys like Shirley Edwards and Carmen
Brock. That's what this is all about.

Sunroad is very important to Sanders. His reputation
with the developer community is at stake. If he fails
them on Sunroad they will cast him aside and support
Steve Francis in 2008. Sanders knows it only too well. A
compliant City Attorney has always been part of the
system. If Sanders is not able to control that Office he
is no good to the developers.

Therefore he relies on the belief that he can bring
Aguirre to heel through budget blackmail. He used that
same budget power to reward Chief Lansdowne for defying
a judge's order. He granted a hefty 8% raise to the
police. Result: the cops got their raise and Story's
office was immune from the normal operation of the
judicial system.

The job of the
Budget Review Committee today is to stop this "strong
blackmail form of government". They should
remember the old saying: "if they'll do it with you,
they'll do it to you". If Sanders can do this to
Aguirre today, he will do it to them tomorrow.

ITEM-4: FY 2008 Budget Hearing: City Attorney is
scheduled to start at 3:00 P.M. in the Council Chambers.
The
Committee members are Toni Atkins (Chair), Scott
Peters, Kevin Faulconer, Donna Frye and Jim Madaffer. I
am sure they would appreciate hearing your views. How
important a bulwark against the growing power of the
Mayor's Office is the City Council and its
sub-committees? This is not about Mike Aguirre's budget,
it is about the way the Mayor is attempting to use his
budgetary authority to get the legislation and the legal
advice he wants. That's not how a healthy democracy
works.

The big item on today's City Council agenda is the
Council's governing policies for Community Planning
Groups. It is
Item-332, page 32, on the Docket.

The Land Use & Housing Committee (LU&H) voted 4-0 on
October 25, 2006, that City staff should prepare and
submit to City Council a set of standardized bylaws for
all Community Planning Groups (CPGs). They were to
include a process whereby CPGs can apply for bylaw
variances, with a right of appeal to the LU&H.

On
October 27, 2006 Mike Aguirre wrote an MOL
overturning a Casey Gwinn 2000 "opinion" that CPGs were
not subject to the Brown Act. Until Aguirre
stated the obvious in his MOL, City staff thought they
could do as they wished with the community planning
system. That of course was the purpose of Gwinn's 2000
"opinion".

A week earlier I had written a particularly
vehement rant against the heavy-handed way the
Mayors' Office (as the Planning Department and DSD now
like to be known)
abruptly cancelled the October CPC meeting. It had
been due to launch the new General Plan. But Sanders
wanted that honor for himself so he launched it with
much fanfare two days later. That was the only reason a
CPC meeting was cancelled - Mayoral PR. And the
compliant chair, private planning consultant Steve Laub
(at that time consulting to Sunroad) obeyed Betsy
McCullogh - do what you're told and you get on at City
Hall.

On April 24, 2007 CPC had some
input into the
proposed bylaws, but by and large they swallowed it
whole. Perhaps the most significant item they protested,
if only half-heartedly, was the City's insistence that
each CPG "adopt the standardized bylaws shell in its
entirety". The Mayor's Office responded with an
adamant "procedures must be standardized".
Reading the stern response you can almost hear Waring
stomp his foot.

Here is the staff report. The
City team has flatly said that it will not consider even
the slightest deviation to the bylaws. It points out
that appealing to LU&H would deprive the Council Offices
a say on any proposed deviations. The team therefore
insists that even the most minute bylaw deviation must
get docketed for a full City Council hearing.

Considering that La Jolla was denied an opportunity to
be heard before the City Council for some major bylaw
deviations and was docketed instead for a full-blown
decertification hearing, it is easy to see how this will
work. Waring must have gone to the same dictator school
as Sanders. They both know how to keep peons in line.

Also, the City is talking up the so-called dangerous
provisions of the Brown Act. They are scaring CPG
members with wild stories about personal liability,
designed to ensure abject compliance. Using the Brown
Act as their excuse, they will now require centralized
community mailing lists and CPG record keeping -
at the Mayor's Office.

Will that list be public or will it only be available to
well-connected lobbyists and political consultants? Even
the Kremlin would be proud of that little citizen
monitoring coup.

Now read the proposed
policy
document itself,
particularly the strikeouts. Note that a planning group
can only consist of 12 to 20 individuals. It may
incorporate, but if it does it is a totally separate
entity. Incorporation was the main problem Waring had
with La Jolla. He wants a small group of INDIVIDUALS
he can control. No corporations.

In practice up to half of these individuals are
architects. Most of the rest are from large real estate
firms like Prudential. They always manage to have a
majority of developer industry professionals. The
smaller the group the easier to pack it with
professionals. And they do not even have to be local
residents. All one needs is a business address in the
planning area. In practice many CPG members live out of
the area.

The firm hand of the Mayor's Office is evident
throughout this policy document. It is supposed to be a
Council policy, but it is clearly a Mayoral policy. We
can therefore look forward to an even tighter Mayoral
grip on land use. DSD is after all a self-professed
enterprise, not a government department.

To illustrate how the current Mayor's Office feels about
the City Council, at a recent
Catfish Club forum Ronne Froman lamented the number
of times
her staff “has endured the inquisition
process we call council meetings.”
I guess the Navy is not the best place to learn about
democracy. Maybe that's why Sanders picked her.

Here is the complete
Bylaws Shell.
With it Waring hopes to neuter the concept of community
planning. Isn't that what Sanders hired him to do?

05/23/07 Postscript: To his credit
yesterday Scott Peters "got the message" and attempted
to curb the stranglehold City staff was putting on the
planning groups. In an about-turn from the way he
handled the La Jolla request for a deviation hearing, he
undertook to place on the Docket on or before November
20, 2007 any deviation request from any CPG. That was a
significant win for the community planners who spoke
yesterday and a significant punch in the eye forSanders' land use palace guard.

Here we go again with
the revitalization of decades old "Master Plans". This
time it is the 1961 Salk Institute Master Plan. Claiming
development rights supposedly granted back in 1961 they
now want to construct
"new scientific research facilities and accessory uses,
including temporary residential quarters and a day care
facility for employees on the existing Salk Institute
campus".

DSD's
Draft EIR: "Recommended
Finding: The draft Environmental Impact
Report concludes that the project would result in
significant environmental impacts in the following
areas: Biological resources, Historical resources,
Noise, Paleontological Resources, and
Traffic/Circulation."

The Sierra Club has sent
this letter
to DSD. It raises some very disturbing matters. Also
this letter from the University City Planning Group
that raises questions about the location of the proposed
day care center.

Apparently the Sierra Club recently discovered that Salk
has illegally put a locked gate across a longtime public
access to the beach and public park. The Club then asked
the City to direct Salk to remove the gate immediately.
I will monitor the City's response very closely and give
you updates. Such a public right-of-way must not be
lost.

As the Sierra Club points out, how can a 46 year old
Master Plan confer 2007 rights that bear little
resemblance to the 1961 Development Agreement? Answer:
the much abused concept of "Substantial Conformance
Review". The Sanders administration will grandfather in
just about anything. Ask Marcella Escobar-Eck. She sure
did some grandfathering at Sunroad. God knows what she
will now grandfather at Salk. The whole concept of
"Substantial Conformance Review" has to be outlawed. The
practice of "Master Plans" has to be discontinued. It
always results in developer giveaways.

In 1963 the San Diego voters generously donated
to Salk the most beautiful piece of pristine coastal
property in all of Southern California - 26 gorgeous
acres of pueblo lands overlooking the ocean and a
coastal canyon. Louis Kahn then built an architectural
masterpiece to house a world class research institute.
Everybody was happy.

But now greed has taken
over.
This venerable old
scientific Institute wants
to build a health club and plush executive
offices with ocean views.
Salk has not been a very good steward of the priceless
land it was so freely given by the people of San Diego.
For scientists, presumed to value natural life (it was
because they were research biologists they were given
such a biological gem), they have behaved abominably to
native life.

They have driven tractors over vernal pools, allowed ice
plant to grow out of control destroying sensitive plant
life. The whole place is a mess of temporary buildings
with piles of dirt where once there was habitat. Now
they want to pour concrete over everything. They have
locked out the very people who donated the land they
despoil.

The City can start by replying to that letter from the
Sierra Club. All records and documents from past
developments, together with all documentation for any
proposed future developments, must be put in the public
domain and be available for inspection.

Salk can start by opening up that access road and
throwing away that illegal gate. Then we can talk about
what they may and may not build. Watch for future bulletins.

So, Mayor Sanders is to have his CEO, Ronne Froman,
investigate the Sunroad fiasco as to process only. She
is instructed not to find blame on anybody (except maybe
the City Attorney if she can manage it). Is this the
same Jerry Sanders that vowed to "remediate" the
widespread lack of personal responsibility among City
staff, identified in the Kroll Report? Wasn't he going
to "clean up" the City? Apparently not.

The reason is obvious. He knows that two of his top
appointees, Jim Waring and Escobar-Eck, would not
survive a real investigation, hence the Froman snow job.

Watch
the video of Sanders' Sunroad press conference on
Friday. Sanders: "The reality is that
the Development Services Department and the City
Attorneys Office were aware of the FAA’s concerns,
and for reasons that are not entirely clear, failed
to act." We can already see how this is going: Froman has been instructed to blame Aguirre.

So I did a little investigating of my own. Here is a
letter
written by former Deputy City Attorney David Miller (never
my favorite member of Aguirre's staff) to Jim Waring
on 10/16/2006, relaying Mike
Aguirre's personal instructions to "immediately
issue a "Stop Work Order" on the Sunroad
building. What part of that letter did Jim Waring not
understand? Was there something wrong with the "process"
Waring used to read it?

After all kinds of delaying tactics Waring reluctantly
issued the Stop
Work order on 10/27/06, eleven days later!

But here is the real duplicity. Sanders' staff issued
the final building
permit to Sunroad on Friday July 7th, 2006, for a
height of 180 feet, at exactly the same time the FAA
was being assured that the building was being scaled
back to 160 feet. I checked the actual plans stamped
out by DSD on July 7th. They show an (unchanged)
building height of 180 feet, not the 160 feet being sold
to the FAA. Tom Story was due to meet with the DSD
"team" at 11:30 A.M. the following Monday. Here are
the emails
setting it up.

DSD staff were fully aware of the FAA position. Karen
McDonald
made
sure to include them in her emails. And here is a
timeline
compiled by none other than Tom Story himself. Look at
the June 20 entry "Sunroad letter to FAA showing
intent to build to 160 feet" and June 22 "FAA
application to build to 160 feet". Both Sunroad and
DSD were engaged in fooling the FAA. Everybody at DSD knew
that Sunroad had no intention of staying at 160 feet.
They knew it on July 7, that's why they
issued the 180 foot permit.

Did David Miller know? I have seen no evidence that he
did. Besides, it was not his job to advise on permits.
It will be interesting to see if Ronne Froman can figure
out a way of finding that he should have stopped DSD
from issuing a permit. With all her
"administrative" skills she will have a tough time
blaming everything on "process". DSD staff knew that Tom Story and
Aaron Feldman were "special". They weren't about to
confront them in the DSD conference room on July 10,
2006, and tell them that the City must wait until the FAA
made its ruling. They already knew what it would be.

Now read Sanders
letter to
CALTRANS last week. It is part of what Sanders described
at his Friday press conference as "efforts to find solutions behind the scenes"
- in other words to get Sunroad off the hook. He is
negotiating with the FAA to "de-conflict aircraft
operations and the building" by putting forward a
proposal "to discontinue circling instrument
approaches north of the field and allowing aircraft to
circle to the south".

Forget it Sanders. If that's the next step in your plan
to force the closure of Montgomery Field, the true endgame for you
and your developer buddies, the pilots will rise up in
revolt. They sit on the left side of their aircraft and
will not circle to the right. It is too dangerous and
the FAA will not approve it.

You are not going to be able to smile your way out of
this one Mr. Mayor, nor will your wonder woman, Ronne Froman,
be able to deliver the snow job you have ordered. The rule of holes
Jerry: when
you are in a hole, stop digging. What you just did was
reach for a bigger shovel. In the end, that building
will come down to 160 feet. Get used to it.

In a 20 minute interview with
Jennifer Vigil of the U-T yesterday Jerry Sanders
attempted a bit of "political weatherizing" of his own.
I doubt it will be any more effective than the infamous
weatherizing of the Sunroad building. Jerry has to "dig
a little deeper" into his heart and accept that he has a
couple of wrong ones running his development services,
Jim Waring and Marcella Escobar-Eck. They will continue
to get him into political hot water until he eventually
fires them. They are his Paul Wolfowitz and Alberto
Gonzales.

"Taking full responsibility" for Sunroad is just Sanders
opening move in a planned "solution". Waring will come
up with a "compensation" package for Sunroad. Remember
how he attempted to "settle" Navy Broadway by offering
Manchester $20 million "compensation" for open space
Manchester was obligated to provide in the first place.

At Sunroad I expect it will have something to do with
the old SDG&E transformer. Sunroad was obligated to move
it but didn't. They may agree to scale down their too
tall building in return for Sanders "taking
responsibility" for moving the SDG&E transformer.

Maybe it was all set up in advance. The taxpayers may be
paying Waring's salary but Sanders hired him to serve
the developers, not the City. So watch out for your
wallets folks, Jim Waring is about to use his legendary
negotiating skills - with your money.

Here we go again. DSD
is coming back at us with another
Density Bonus attack. This time they have done their
homework. They have created a new slick Supplementto their original EIR. Bob Manis has been busy
reworking the original, which correctly stated
that the coastal 30 foot height limit is not protected
by the Coastal Commission.

Now all of sudden it is. Being the political hack
that he is, Manis rewrote the original EIR as instructed
by the developers. And we pay his salary! Or do we?
Maybe that's the problem: we don't, they do. This is the
same guy who wrote Doug Manchester's $50,000 EIR "finding" that
the environment hasn't changed downtown in 15 years.

Here is Manis' freshly minted lies, dated today.
Soon they will be put before the Council.

A quick look at the Supplement makes it clear that DSD is
recycling the same basic lie: "deviations from the 30 foot
coastal height limit cannot be considered as
incentives". A deviation from
the coastal height limit is available as a density bonus
concession, the very same as a height limit concession outside
the coastal zone. Being part of the LCP is not grounds
for refusing a developer. The Coastal Commission does not
enforce local height limits, voter approved or otherwise. And Manis knows it.

Mike Aguirre has to come to terms with the fact that one
of his deputy city attorneys, Shannon Thomas, wrote a
lying MOL for DSD back in September 2006, while DSD
and the
developers were
paying her salary. Her time was charged out to DSD. That is a remnant of the
old Casey Gwinn
"legal advice for sale" days. But has it stopped?
I've been told that it has. Then who wrote this new Ordinance? Does
DSD have its own attorneys over there now? Who checked the EIR for legal issues? Manis?

DSD or any City Department, should not be able to
purchase the legal advice it likes from the same City
Attorney we elect to ensure City staff obey the law.
Yet that is exactly what has been happening for many
years. The problem still is: who does the City Attorney
represent, the people or City staff? If he represents
DSD staff, he effectively represents the developers.
That must be clarifed.

Shannon Thomas's lying
September 8, 2006 MOL is a direct result of this
dubious situation. Her salary was paid by DSD, which is
an enterprise fund, not part of the General Fund. DSD relies
entirely on developer
fees for funding. They are therefore its
clients. The bigger the project the more it earns. They
love the big developers.

Developers' service staff actually meet with DSD
staff every month to
"advise" it on how to improve its services. It is called
the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC). So, not only do
they get the service they require, they get the
legal advice they require.

Our City Council is little more than a rubber stamp for
the legislation written by the developers through the
DSD, using legal advice purchased from the City
Attorney's office. The pending Density Bonus legislation
is just an example. The developers get to write the EIRs
and the Municipal Code. The people have become mere
spectators.

I had hoped that by now the Shannon Thomas's
September 8, 2006 MOL would have been withdrawn by
Aguirre's office. If it had, Bob Manis could never
have written this
Supplement to the Density Bonus EIR. Nor could
whoever wrote this new and improved developer-serving
Density Bonus Ordinance have written it. Jim Waring will
once again quote the City Attorney as his authority that
the 30 foot height limit is protected.

This new Ordinance is much the same as the one sent back
to the Mayor's Office a few months ago. We have to fight
the whole sordid fight all over again.

I wrote my "Good luck Marcella" piece
last night before
seeing
Bob Kittle's about-turnor
Gerry Braun's (always amusing) U-T pieces today.
What a wind shift down at the U-T. Fred Sainz and Jerry
Sanders must be in emergency session this morning. Is
the Teflon finally wearing off our Jerry? Bob Kittle
sure stripped a few layers with: "Jerry
Sanders should be embarrassed – and the public should be
furious".

Well they're furious all right Bob, they have been for
some time, you just didn't notice. You were so busy
beating up on Mike Aguirre that it slipped by you.
So now what?

That stop work order on Sunroad has to be fully enforced
- finally. Any more work on that building and the City
is in contempt of the State authorities. If Jerry does
not take immediate action his career could end right
here. Murphy resigned for less. Sanders hired
Escobar-Eck back from Carlsbad in October 2006. He is
responsible for her.

Also, here is
Jim
Waring dragging his feet and arguing with DOT over
the Stop Work order. He actually asked them:"will your department assume and
accept responsibility for any financial liability and
cost of defense that may arise from that action?"
That is like a burglar asking the Police Department to
assume financial responsibility for his "loss of
earnings" while in jail. In Jim Waring's bizarre logic,
because the crime was already committed (the building
was "already built") the criminal must be compensated!

And these are two key people
Mayor Sanders hired to run the City? Thank goodness for
Mike Aguirre's professionalism. This City needs
professionals in charge of its day to day management,
not political hacks. Right now it looks too much like
Bush's White House.

Mike Aguirre issued a
32 page Report
on Sunroad today. When you read it together with David Hasemyer's
watchdog report in the U-T, you probably have about
all the information on Sunroad you can handle. So here
is my "cut-to-the-chase" summary:

It all comes down to Marcella Escobar-Eck. What is now
the Sunroad project has been her baby from its
inception. She advocated it before the City Council in
1997. It passed. She has nurtured it and protected it
ever since. But, has she gone too far this time?

By March 2005 Sunroad bore no resemblance to what she got
passed the City Council in 1997. It had quickly grown from 3
stories in 1997 to 6 stories in 2001 to 12 stories in
2005. She seems to consider it her very personal gift to
developers. What is she hoping for? A developer job?
Perhaps, but it may well cost her her City job.

She is central to Aguirre's "efforts to meet the
concerns of the California Department of Transportation
so as not to enable "the developer to violate State law"".
It was she who "enabled the developer to violate the
law". It was her motherly gift to Sunroad. Her 1997
three story baby had a six story son in 2001, who in turn fathered a whopping broth of a boy
towering to twelve stories in 2005! She really
understands "grandfathering".

Take a bow Marcella. She and that 1997 "grandfather" must have
made one hell of a couple. And she did it all
without any help from the City Council. In fact she didn't even tell them. Today's 12 story 180 foot
towering
wonder is Marcella's very own grandson - by a 1997 "grandfather"
who apparently was only a puny 3
story midget.

Seriously though, in view of
the pressure Aguirre is now under to
protect the City (he must mollify
the Department of
Transportation who are baying for City blood), it is hard to see how Sanders can
continue to protect his favorite employee, Escobar-Eck.
She has already cost him political capital. He
had to prostitute Police Chief Lansdowne, who
took a lot of heat for keeping Aguirre at bay (we all
know it was Marcella Aguirre wanted, not Story).
Sanders had to ensure Bonnie Dumanis stayed out of it
and did not interfere. Dumanis also took heat for pandering
to Sanders and may not do it again.

Wily old Jim Waring has been careful to keep his head
down on this so far. He let Escobar-Eck do the
running. He wrote self-serving emails, worthy of a
Fred Sainz. But the law is catching up on Marcella.
Somebody enabled Sunroad to violate state law. Teflon Sanders won't take the fall.
Jerry knows that when it comes to the crunch his developer
friends won't protect him, any more than they protected
Dick
Murphy.

John Kern, Murphy's chief of staff, left City Hall to
raise money for Murphy's legal defense. But there were no
takers, not even John Moore's, whom Murphy had
perjured himself to endow with a $300 million
ballpark. Murphy had to resign because he was left
high and dry by the ones he so faithfully served. They
will most certainly do it to Sanders, Escobar-Eck, or anybody else foolish enough to
trust their false promises.

And there is no point demonizing Mike Aguirre for her
stupid mistakes. Mike has no choice but to do what the people
elected him to do. He must protect the City from people
like her. He must start by completely reversing her
defiance of the State Department of Transportation. That
was really stupid.
The DOT is not going to go away.

She should have sent Sunroad back to the City Council in
2005. Mike Stepner
said it best to the U-T: "the
right to build is no longer vested when you are changing
the project so substantially.” Can anybody imagine a
Mike Stepner doing such a dumb thing? "Because
Sunroad's building deviated so dramatically from the
1997 plan, the project should have gone back to the City
Council and the Planning Commission for a new review"
he said. But Marcella took it all upon
herself. For what? For
Aaron Feldman?

Before this is done, she may join
the "Pension 8", who,
if they had to do it over, like Murphy, might do it a
little differently. My advice to any City employee: be a little less trusting
of those who say they will protect you. Good luck
Marcella. You're on your own.

The San Diego
Courts have become instruments of political power.
05/10/07

Judge Wellington's arrogance (he told our City Attorney
Mike Aguirre to sit down in court yesterday, refusing to
hear what he had to say) demonstrates the grip an elite
group of individuals has achieved over this city. These
insiders have gained control to an extent exceeded only
by those who seized control of our nation's Capitol in
2000. Wellington epitomizes the doctrine that the
Judicial Branch is a mere instrument of political power.

As a result multiple appeals are spilling out of San
Diego. Mike Aguirre quite rightly added the Tom Story
criminal case to that growing list. Wellington did not
like it, so he lost his cool in court yesterday. This
cadre of insiders intended to immediately appoint a
"special" prosecutor. Who could they have had in mind?
Casey Gwinn? Leslie Devaney?

The rest of us can only guess at the scope of "services"
routinely provided to the developer community by Tom
Story and his like. The special interests Story served
for 20 years is now mobilized to send a clear message to
its current insiders e.g. Jim Waring and Marcella
Escobar-Eck - if you faithfully do your "duty" to the
developers while on the inside, they will protect you
when you seek your reward on the outside.

How else are we supposed to interpret the outrageous
antics of Police Chief Lansdowne, DA Bonnie Dumanis and
Judge Wellington? They are puppets of the Establishment.

But Dumanis and Wellington may have slipped up in their
haste to serve their masters. Making her
submission to Wellington BEFORE he issued his ruling
barring Aguirre from prosecuting Story, Dumanis may have
handed Aguirre exactly what he needs to win his appeal.
As Aguirre pointed out in court yesterday, Dumanis'
submission to Wellington was improper and it was
improper for Wellington to read it. As a Judge he knows
that and that is why he lost his cool yesterday. He
knows it will hurt him on appeal.

So, does Dumanis routinely do as she is told by the
Establishment, or does she ever think first? She could
hardly have given much thought to her untimely
interference in the Story case. Does she simply get a
phone call from Kollender or Sanders and immediately
comply? Compliance is a highly valued virtue in San
Diego today.

It is now up to you and I, the plain People of the State
of California, to protect our health and safety from
these developer buffoons. The Sunroad building is a
public nuisance and a safety hazard to those of us who
fly. I do not want to read that one of my long-time
flying friends died because of Sunroad's greed. I did my
first solo from nearby runway 28R in 1977.
Unfortunately, like most people who fly, I have lost
very close friends to flying. It is dangerous enough
without Story's and Wellington's ignoble contributions.

We need to support and encourage our City Attorney, the FAA and the California Department of
Transportation, to protect us from the arrogance of
developers like Sunroad and their servile puppets Chief Lansdowne, DA Dumanis and Judge Wellington. We
should start by initiating a full public
investigation into what is happening at Sunroad. We
need an ad hoc committee of public-spirited individuals
who will do what the Establishment has barred Aguirre
from doing. Any takers?

There is one thing judge Michael D. Wellington missed in
his rant
against Michael Aguirre yesterday: this case is "The
People of the State of California" v. Thomas T.
Story, not Mike Aguirre v. Tom Story, as the San Diego
Establishment are painting it.

Wellington's 11 page judicial rant was matched only by
Bob Kittle's editorial rant in today's San Diego
establishment newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Let them rant, The People of California will have the
last say. Wellington's establishment-serving ruling will
only serve to further inflame the people. They know
where blame lies.

Judge Wellington didn't even bother to get his basic
facts straight. He wrote: "The evidence
shows that Defendant, Tom Story, was a long-time City
employee who worked with the City’s Development Services
Department (DSD) and then for the Mayor". Story
never worked for DSD, he worked for the Planning
Department. But then facts didn't play much of a part in
Wellington's decision.

This case is far from over. The people of San Diego will
now make it their own. Like Mike Aguirre we are not
going to disappear silently into the night. Story and
his inside helpers at the City are not going to be able
to serve their developer masters and blame outsider
Aguirre. We are all outsiders in this
developer-controlled city.

It is time to call on the institutions of this State to
bring this rogue city under civilized governance. It is
time to warn the rest of the Golden State that if it
does not reign in the San Diego disease it will spread
from the Mexican border to Oregon

The San Diego disease is well known around the world. It
created and maintains Third World countries. Money is
power, votes mean nothing. Look no further than Mexico.
Judges become part of the establishment, Police Chiefs
protect the oligarchy that appointed them, developers
build what they please because they control the permit
process. Look around you, are we far behind? Is it
already here?

Sunroad will be the test case. So far the monied
establishment is winning. It is now up to "The People of the State of California", not just
Mike Aguirre.

"Funding the Pension PlanRestoring the integrity of the City’s Retirement
System has been a top priority for the long-term fiscal
health and stability of the City. In November 2006,
voters approved the passage of Proposition B, the
Mayor’s initiative calling for voter approval in
allowing any future increases in pension benefits for
City employees. On June 2006, the San Diego City
Employees’ Retirement System (SDCERS) released its 2006
actuarial valuation report for the City of San Diego and
determined that the City’s Annual Required Contribution
(ARC) for Fiscal Year 2008 was $137.7 million.

In Fiscal Year 2008, the City is
committed to paying the normal cost and the unfunded
liability cost and will contribute $20 million in
addition to the ARC of $137.7 million. This amount will
pay down the Unfunded Actuarial Accrued Liability (UAAL)with no negative amortization. In addition,
the City has budgeted an additional $7.3 million to
begin paying back the pension plan for assets spent
inappropriately in prior years on $165.1 million."

So, according to Jerry Sanders, his ARC payment of $137
million for 2008 "will pay down the UAAL with no
negative amortization". Really!

Here is the
City's UAAL Amortization Schedule.
I obtained it from Jay Goldstone. I prepared a
20-year amortization schedule of my own (based on 8%
interest and the starting UAAL used by City staff in
their schedule), see below. I then put Sanders' payment
schedule alongside mine and compared them.

Their schedule has huge negative amortization! It
doesn't even pay the interest until 2011 and then only
barely. They have 21 payments rather than 20 (even
though the voters mandated 15). $192 million of the
deficit will be paid in the 21st year, 2028. They don't
start making a dent in the deficit until 2019. Is this
what the voters mandated?

Here, see for yourself:

Normal
Amortization Schedule

Sanders' Proposal

Year

Payment

Principal

Interest

Balance

Payment

Short/Over

1,289,038,773

2008

129,384,442

27,245,978

102,138,464

1,261,792,795

81,035,764

-48,348,678

2009

129,384,442

29,507,381

99,877,061

1,232,285,414

95,464,353

-33,920,089

2010

129,384,442

31,956,479

97,427,963

1,200,328,935

95,464,353

-33,920,089

2011

129,384,442

34,608,851

94,775,591

1,165,720,084

95,464,353

-33,920,089

2012

129,384,442

37,481,368

91,903,073

1,128,238,716

99,108,201

-30,276,241

2013

129,384,442

40,592,304

88,792,138

1,087,646,412

103,320,300

-26,064,142

2014

129,384,442

43,961,445

85,422,997

1,043,684,968

107,711,412

-21,673,030

2015

129,384,442

47,610,223

81,774,219

996,074,745

112,289,147

-17,095,295

2016

129,384,442

51,561,848

77,822,594

944,512,897

117,061,436

-12,323,006

2017

129,384,442

55,841,456

73,542,986

888,671,441

122,036,547

-7,347,895

2018

129,384,442

60,476,269

68,908,172

828,195,171

127,223,101

-2,161,341

2019

129,384,442

65,495,770

63,888,672

762,699,402

132,630,082

3,245,640

2020

129,384,442

70,931,886

58,452,555

691,767,515

138,266,861

8,882,419

2021

129,384,442

76,819,198

52,565,244

614,948,317

144,143,202

14,758,760

2022

129,384,442

83,195,153

46,189,288

531,753,164

150,269,288

20,884,846

2023

129,384,442

90,100,310

39,284,131

441,652,854

156,655,733

27,271,291

2024

129,384,442

97,578,591

31,805,850

344,074,262

163,313,602

33,929,160

2025

129,384,442

105,677,566

23,706,875

238,396,696

170,254,430

40,869,988

2026

129,384,442

114,448,752

14,935,689

123,947,944

177,490,243

48,105,801

2027

129,384,442

123,947,942

5,436,500

0

185,033,579

55,649,137

2028

0

0

0

0

192,897,506

192,897,506

Let's look at how Sanders has set it up for himself
if he wins in 2008. According to his own
published
amortization payment schedule, far from doing what
the voters mandated in Prop B, paying off the pension
deficit over 15 years, Sanders will have added more than
$20 million (there will be interest on the unpaid
interest) to the pension deficit by the time he leaves
office. And everybody is afraid to run against this guy?

Former City Attorneys routinely supplemented their
department's budget by charging fat fees for custom-made
"advice" to other City departments. They made a business
out of telling City Departments whatever it was they
wanted to hear. Casey Gwinn took it to a whole new level
by billing the waster-water department for services he
never provided.

Notice that there is
still some budgeted charges for (internal) legal
services. They do not publish a breakdown. Presumably
these are legitimate pre-agreed charges to enterprise
funds such as sewer, water, CCDC and DSD (DSD is an
enterprise fund!). Notice that there is roughly a $2
million reduction in "Charges for Current Services" in
the City Attorney's 2008 budget. Is that because DSD no
longer uses the City Attorney for legal services?

DSD recently stopped paying the City Attorney's office
for legal services. Apparently Jim Waring did not
appreciate Mike Aguirre interfering in DSD's proposed
Density Bonus Ordinance for example. When you put that
together with an item in the Business Processing
Reengineering (BPR) Report with regard to DSD, the penny
drops:

BPR Recommendation #
130

City Comment

"Take more control of
the resources and work programs of other
departments involved in the code adoption
process by hiring outside regulation publication
vendors, directly engaging attorney services by
assigning dedicated staff or hiring outside
counsel."

"Creation of a
coordinated regulatory system and team that will
allow better control of the code amendment and
implementation process."

Sanders and his developer
cronies want to create a city within a city. Under
Aguirre they no longer have shills within the City
Attorney's office doing their bidding, so they want to
set up their own legal department within DSD. They want
to write their own developer-serving ordinances, such as
the Density Bonus Ordinance. They plan a complete June
overhaul of the City's Land Use Code, using outside
attorneys, paid for by developers.

We need to let the Mayor know whether we want him and
his developer friends to: "Take
more control of the resources and work programs of other
departments involved in the code adoption process by
hiring outside regulation publication vendors, directly
engaging attorney services by assigning dedicated staff
or hiring outside counsel."

I sure don't. We elected Mike Aguirre to do that, not
Sanders' developers' outside attorneys. When Jim Waring
presents his next land use ordinance to the City
Council, e.g. his revised Density Bonus Ordinance, I am
going to have a lot of questions about who wrote it,
obviously not the City Attorney.

If we allow this kind of takeover of the legislative
process to go on, pretty soon there will be no role for
a City Attorney. Our City will be run by developers'
attorneys and other business interests. Is that what the
people who voted for Sanders intended? I doubt it.

Sunroad shows
that the City Attorney must represent the people.
05/04/07

The City's Development Services Department (DSD), under
its Director, Marcella Escobar-Eck,
an old friend of Tom Story, stamped and approved a set
of construction plans for Sunroad that raises many
questions of special treatment.

"When the vertical distance between the finish-floor
elevation and the finish-floor or flat roof elevation
immediately above exceeds 15 feet, gross floor area
includes the area of the actual floor plus the area of a
phantom floor at 15 feet of height and at each 7-foot,
6-inch increment, or portion thereof, of height above
the 15-foot height, as shown in Diagram 113-02S."

Here is the actual
permit. Note that it is for 12 stories and 306,000
square feet. I viewed the building's approved plans at
DSD and found that they show eleven of the twelve floors have a height of 13.75
feet. However the twelfth floor is 17.33 feet and its
floor area is 23,070 square feet (see table below). That
means that there is actually a 13th (phantom) floor and
an additional 23,070 square feet.

In addition, the building has a penthouse or utility
room above the 12th floor (presumably for air-conditioning and
elevator machinery). Here are the Municipal Code rules
for calculating gross floor area for a penthouse:
"§113.0234 Calculating Gross Floor Area
(a) Elements Included in Gross Floor Area For
Development in All Zones

(7) Gross floor area includes penthouses, except in the following
instances:
(A) When height of the enclosure above the highest
roofline of the building or structure upon which the
enclosure is located is no more than 13 feet for an
elevator shaft or 9 feet for a stairwell; and
(B) When total plan area of the enclosure or
enclosures is not more than 10 percent
of the area of the roof plan of the building."

Viewed from outside, the Sunroad
penthouse appears to be at least 25% of
the roof area i.e. 23,070 X 0.25 = 5,767 (the roof area
is the same as the 12th floor area). Therefore this does
not qualify as a penthouse and must be treated as the
14th floor. Its actual area, approximately 6,000 square
feet, must be included in the total.

Then there is the problem of the Sunroad Plans and
the City Permit quoting net rentable area, not gross
floor area.
The declared floor areas are much less than the outside
measurements multiplied together, as required by the
Municipal Code.

§113.0234 of the Municipal code says "Gross
floor area includes interior shafts such as elevator
shafts, ventilation shafts, and other similar vertical
shafts, interior stairwells, ramps, and mechanical
equipment rooms." That is not the case with Sunroad.

Floors

Floor
Height

(feet)

Floor Area (square feet)

Declared

Additional

Penthouse/Utility
Room

10.73

6,000

12th

17.33

23,070

23,070
Phantom Floor

11th

13.75

23,070

elevator & staircase

10th

13.75

24,930

elevator & staircase

9th

13.75

26,300

elevator & staircase

8th

13.75

26,300

elevator & staircase

7th

13.75

26,300

elevator & staircase

6th

13.75

26,300

elevator & staircase

5th

13.75

26,300

elevator & staircase

4th

13.75

25,590

elevator & staircase

3rd

13.75

25,140

elevator & staircase

2nd

13.75

25,900

elevator & staircase

1st

13.75

26,700

elevator & staircase

Totals:

179.31

305,900

True Floor Area?

On March 10, 2005 the
"Substantial Conformance Review" (SCR) application was
"Deemed Complete" by DSD. Tom Story was still Mayor
Murphy's Chief of Staff at that time. Then on February
10, 2006 the "Substantial Conformance Review" (SCR)
application was actually approved by DSD and the first
permit was issued.

I have so far been unable to obtain a copy of the New
Century Center Master Plan or the Development Agreement
approved by the City Council in 1997, therefore I am
unable to check exactly what DSD found Sunroad in
"substantial conformance" with.

However, it is fair to assume that the 1997 Development
Agreement allowed for 12 stories and 306,000 square feet
of gross floor area. If that is the case then DSD
has approved plans and issued permits in excess of that
1997 Development Agreement.

It is clear to me that Sunroad could easily have
designed a building that conformed with the 1997
Development Agreement while staying below 160 feet in
height. Did they deliberately provoke the FAA in order
to precipitate the closedown of the airfield?
Did DSD facilitate them? Is that why Chief
Lansdowne protected Sunroad?

The FAA will have to severely restrict, perhaps even
withdraw, the City's
license to operate the airfield when Sunroad frames the
other two
towers. They are even taller than the first and have
already been found by DSD to be in "substantial
conformance" with the 1997 agreement. Site
preparation for these towers has already begun. The
safety hazards created by them will be even greater than
by the first tower.

If Montgomery closes down, will Sunroad obtain the exclusive right to develop
the vacated 500 acres of airport land? Will top City officials like Escobar-Eck follow Tom Story into highly paid jobs with Sunroad?
Is that how it works?

Today in court, lawyers for Story petitioned Judge Kevin
Enright to muzzle the City Attorney on everything to do
with his civil case against Sunroad. They failed. I
decided to go down and watch for myself. I noticed that
an attorney for the State Department of Transportation
was in court and spoke strongly against this muzzle
attempt.

DSD's behavior with regard to Sunroad underlines the
fact that the City's Charter must be clear that the City
Attorney represents the people first and foremost. Then
he represents the City. If he were forced to defend
wrongdoing by City employees the people would be at the
mercy of unscrupulous employees and we seem to always
have a few of them. Sunroad shows that the City Attorney
must represent the people.

If I were to write to my family in Ireland and tell them
that I live in an American city where a former city
employee turned developer is being allowed by the city
to build a 12 story office building, 180 foot high,
beside a city airport, despite having been told by the
U.S. aviation authority and the California state
department of transportation to stop, because the
building is a hazard to aviation, they would say it was
time I left that crazy place.

If I were to further tell them that when the city
attorney tried to prosecute the builder for "inside
trading", the police
chief protected the builder by refusing to carry out a court ordered search
warrant on the builder's premises, that the city's mayor
lambasted the city attorney for trying to prosecutor
that former city employee turned developer and that
the city attorney has now ended up in the
dock himself, they would come and get me.

Not even in the wildest days of the Wild West was there
such disregard for law and order. Dodge City was a model
of civic rectitude compared to present-day San Diego.

According to an audit, that took 3 years to complete,
San Diego overvalued certain of its approximately $1
billion total assets by $458 million, while undervaluing other such assets by $533 million.
Even a blind man making wild guesses would do better
than that. Yet, that is exactly what happened according
to our outside auditors, KPMG.

No wonder the above city employee turned developer,
Tom Story, thumbs his nose at city authorities. He is
one of those who made this city the basket case that it
is.

And there seems to be no relief in sight. The City's
Chief Financial Officer says the Mayor will not be able
to make any improvements until a new computer system is
installed in 2009. The City's Council President sees
nothing whatsoever wrong with anything in the City and
swears the City Attorney is mad and invented the whole
thing.

This Mayor has done absolutely nothing to rescue this
city from the maladministration that has been endemic
for decades. All he does
is preen for the cameras exactly as he did 23
years ago when he put his macho cop image before the lives
of innocent children cowering at the mercy of a mad gunman inside
McDonalds in San Ysidro.

As SWAT commander he ordered the police snipers at the
scene to hold their fire, for over an hour, for no
better reason than so he, Jerry Sanders, now our Mayor,
could suit up, get to San Ysidro through the rush-hour
traffic and be the one on TV. During that long agonizing
hour police snipers had the gunman in their sights but
had to watch while children were killed one by one. That
is hard for me or anybody else to forgive or forget.

23 years after that massacre of the innocents the entire
city of San Diego is at the mercy of this same man. Over
1 million people are held hostage by the greed-crazed
developers and builders who financed this ex-cop's
mayoral election and will do so again. The San Diego
power elite protects its own and Sanders is its
hand-picked man. They certainly have forgiven him the
deaths of all those innocent children at San Ysidro.

What a different country America would be today if the
man the voters elected, Al Gore, had been President for
the last 7 years. What a different city San Diego
would be today if the woman the voters elected, Donna
Frye, had been Mayor for the last 3 years.

The illegal Sunroad building is just an example of the
power wielded by the money interests that finance puppet
politicians like George W. Bush and Jerry Sanders. Money
picks flawed individuals to do its bidding, knowing they
will not answer their bosses back. And that is how it
will remain, and get worse, nationally and locally,
until the ordinary people start paying attention to what
is really happening not what they are told is happening
by the well-oiled political spin machines. Mayor Sanders
has five personal PR professionals to manage his day to
day TV performances - while the city burns.

Some
of you may wonder why I have been coming down so hard on
Scott Peters lately. The reason is - he really is that
bad. How could a public representative go so far off
course as to be actually traveling in the opposite
direction of his election pledge?

Peters is the "wrong way" Corrigan of politics, with my
apologies to Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan. Remember
"Wrong Way"? Read this
Wikipedia essay about that Texas-Irishman and you
will see what I mean. Notice Corrigan's San Diego and
Charles Lindberg connections. I don't mean to imply that
Peters has any of his fine qualities.

So back to Scott Peters. How could anybody run for
public office only to turn on the very people who
elected him? Last night at City Hall he sat in front of
his constituents and attempted to use the Council
President's chair to disenfranchise them. He brought a
trumped up charge against them. He framed them! His own
constituents! But he failed. The La Jolla Community
Planning Association is now stronger than ever.

The background: Council policy allows individual local
planning groups to adopt bylaws that reflect their
particular local circumstances but deviate from a model
or "shell" set of bylaws maintained by the City,
provided that they remain in substantial compliance with
that City "shell". Council policy then requires that a
community planning group must seek Council approval for
any major deviation from that "shell". But it
can be approved.

Even more importantly, the entire bylaws are legal, from
the moment of their adoption, pending that formal City
Council approval or disapproval. That's the way it is
set up. There is no provision otherwise. Therefore there
was no legal basis for Peter's attempted
decertification. That was repeatedly pointed out to him
by Mike Aguirre and his staff.

Peters twice refused to docket La Jolla's request to
obtain City Council approval. Instead he moved directly
to expel them from the planning system. He is the one
who breached Council Policy and he denied them
due process. Officials have been recalled for less.

If that's not wrong-headed and "wrong way" I don't know
what is. It is clear that Peters is trying to curry
favor with the developer community who want to eliminate
all public involvement in land use decisions.
Businessmen always try to get rid of their opposition.
Peters hopes that by eliminating the involvement of
local communities, the developers will pony up the money
he needs to run for City Attorney in 2008. The other
part of this devious strategy is to demonize Mike
Aguirre. That will fail too. The public trusts Mike.
They know he is on their side, even if he doesn't always
succeed in his objectives.

So what happened last night at City Council? Well, in a
nutshell, the people of La Jolla won. Despite Peters’
best efforts to “discipline” his own constituents for an
offense they never committed, Kevin Faulconer,
displaying considerable diplomatic skills, suggested a
"compromise". Essentially the Faulconer “compromise”
gave La Jolla exactly what it was entitled to if Peters
had done the honorable thing in the first place. Last
night's (amended) action essentially brought La Jolla's
request for approval of their bylaw deviations before
the whole City Council. That's what Kevin Faulconer
managed to do.

Madaffer’s (pre-arranged) motion, seconded by of all
people Ben Hueso, to decertify the La Jolla planning
group, was withdrawn and the Faulconer “compromise” was
passed unanimously. Even Peters had to bend to reason in
the end and Kevin Faulconer’s star was raised a notch or
two. He got away for a week from the stifling air of
City Hall to celebrate his wife’s birthday and the sweet
Caribbean air cleared his head. Maybe Scott Peters
should retreat to a little hacienda in the Caribbean
with his wife – for a few years.

So, the Council did the obvious thing, it approved the
La Jolla bylaws but suspended those items that are in
conflict with the City's "shell", until the City's
Planning Department can get its act together and unveil
the new "shell" it has been promising for some time. The
release, according to Betsy McCullough, is now sometime
in May.

It is hard to know whether McCullough and the Planning
Department are still actually working on the new "shell"
or Betsy McCullough, Deputy Director, is playing games
with it. Did the City (DSD and Planning) just want La
Jolla decertified as a service to their developer
clients? Did they hold up the "shell" release until the
plot was achieved?

That's the kind of games City staff play all the time.
Example: the game Greg Levin played with the KPMG 2003
Internal Controls Report. He tried to suppress it until
AFTER the City Council (and the public) "received" the
City's 2003 main Audit Report.

Donna Frye brought the loudest cheers of the night (she
really knows how to work a crowd). She pointedly said
that if somebody tried to pull a stunt like that on a
planning group in her District she would “fight like
hell”. Indeed she would. What a contrast with “Wrong
Way” Peters. If only we had eight Council Members like
Donna Frye.

She then turned to Jimbo Waring and nailed him as the
real evil genius behind this whole sordid affair.
Speaking directly to him she suggested that what really
happened was that the La Jolla planning group dared
to include a few bylaw items of their own “and you
got angry”. Yep. That’s exactly what happened
Donna. Waring got angry. So angry his hair caught fire,
according to one email.

But you know, Waring doesn't bother me, not near as much as
Peters does. Waring is just a Sanders' hireling. He is
actually doing the job he was hired for, to clear the
way for Sanders' developers. When I have a beef with
something he does, I address it directly to the Mayor. But Peters
.... he was hired by the people of District One - in
good faith.

So, unpleasant though it was last night, we got it all
out in the open and hopefully we can now move on. I just
hope that both “Jimbo” and “Wrong Way” Peters have
learned something from it. If not, the sooner they both
leave the public sector, the better. Both constantly
demonstrate an appalling disdain for democracy and the
rule of law.

As far as DSD and the Planning Department are concerned,
they better get used to the idea that the public is not
such an easy push-over as they imagined. Maybe we will
now see a little less of pushy staffers like Planning's
Cecelia Williams jumping up every five seconds and
grabbing the microphone at the community planning group
meetings.

We have already taught Betsy McCullough that she cannot
unilaterally cancel a regularly scheduled meeting of the
Community Planning Committee (CPC) as she did last
October so that CPC would not to steal Mayor Sanders'
thunder at his news conference the following day where
he introduced the City's General Plan.

We have Mike Aguirre to thank for imposing the Brown Act
on the community planning groups, much to the chagrin of
Betsy McCullough and the old-guard City's power elite.

So, we are making progress. Make no mistake about
it. We just need a few more Donna Frye's and few less
Scott Peters. The key to democracy is citizen
involvement. It works.

I went to City Council yesterday and supported the
continuance of the Item accepting the KPMG 2003 Audit
Report. The way the Mayor has handled the release of
this Report is becoming quite troubling. Something does
not seem right. Is the Mayor dedicated to reform or is
he hiding facts from the public? Here is some background
to this story:

First watch the video
of the Mayor's
upbeat Press Conference on March 16, 2007. Sanders
described the KPMG
Audit Opinion Letter as a
"clean audit opinion" and promised that he is
"dedicated to reform". The
U-Tran a
glowing report of the celebratory event. Aguirre was
full of praise for the Mayor and his staff.

Now it turns out that the Mayor suppressed a vital half
of that March 12, 2007 Audit Report. Here is
the other half. Why did the Mayor withhold it from
the public? It can only mean that his dedication to
reform is not as dedicated as he says. If it were, he
would be having a discussion with us about the serious
shortcomings in our internal controls.

I can't help wondering whether this is connected with
the easing out of John Torell, the former City Auditor.
It is well known that Torell did not fit into the
Mayor's plan. John believed in open government and the
free flow of information - hardly the hallmark of
Sanders' administration.

Here is his one and only
Report on Internal Controls, dated January 1, 2006.
He called it his First Annual. Unfortunately it was
destined to be also his Last Annual. His more political
savvy successors did not repeat his mistake. There has
been no 2007 report.

What does this say about the staff that Sanders found
more to his liking? Greg Levin for example? Levin seems
to be a rising star at City Hall. He recently displayed
the chutzpah to lecture both Donna Frye and
Mike
Aguirre. I'm sure that got a few guffaws inside the
Mayor's circle and further elevated his star.

Here is Levin's
audacious response to Councilmember Frye's
legitimate questions regarding the Mayor's withholding
of the Independent Auditor's Internal Controls Report.
Levin's
cover letter says it all. It simply says "Here you
go". I think the Mayor's staff should have more respect
for City Councilmembers and the public whom they
represent.

Watch the video
of Councilmember Frye requesting a copy of the missing
half of the KPMG Audit Report at last Wednesday's Budget
Committee meeting. Mr. Levin said that he had now
released the document and that he had placed it on the
Docket for the April 30, 2007 Audit Committee meeting.
He told Councilmember Frye that it was therefore
available to the City Council, as the Audit Committee is
a sub-committee of the City Council. Why then in his "audacious
response" did he scold
Ms. Frye for putting the document on her City Council
web site the moment she received it on Wednesday?

Many, like me, regularly monitor the
"Memorandums" tab of her web site knowing that she
is usually the first to provide access to such
documents. Levin would have known that she shares
everything with the public the moment she receives it.
Indeed he would have known that that was precisely why
she wanted this particular document. She is a public
representative, not a compliant employee of the Mayor.

The full Audit Report will now be heard by Kevin Faulconer's Audit
Committee on April 30th and then by the full City
Council on May 7th or 8th. The public should attend both
meetings and ask lots of questions. There are several
major areas of concern:

(1) did the Mayor lie in
his letter to the Union-Tribune, or did KPMG
back-date its audit letter to March 12, 2007? It has to
be either one or the other;
(2) did the Mayor try to "pull a fast one" on the City
Council yesterday by submitting the KPMG 2003 Audit
Report and the City's 2003 CAFR to the City Council
requesting their approval while withholding an integral
part of that Report - the Internal Controls Report?;
(3) what actions, if any, has the Mayor taken, or does
he propose to take, to address the "material weaknesses"
KPMG found in the "design or operation of one or more of
the internal control components" of the City's financial
reporting systems?;
(4) how will this affect the City's credit rating and
when will that be established?

These are very important questions and, amazingly,
Councilmember Frye seems to be the only public official
asking them. The Mayor seems to have found many willing
accomplices for keeping the public in the dark, not just
Greg Levin.

That smiley face news
conference on March 16, 2007 is all too typical of
this smoke-and-mirrors administration. Fred Sainz and
his department-sized Mayoral spin team know how to put
on a good show.
Now it is up to the public to put on an even better show
on May 7th or 8th, by demanding answers to why their
Mayor is hiding things from them. His "reform" image is wearing a little
thin.

I may have been too kind to Scott Peters comparing him
with Napoleon. A quick look at a bizarre item on
Tuesday's Council Docket suggests a less flattering
image that may give a whole new meaning to a "City of
Villages" - a city of villages complete with an idiot
for each village, starting with La Jolla's own Scott
Peters.

Item-331 on
Page 35 of 43 calls for the decertification of the
La Jolla Community Planning Association as a
City-recognized planning group, for breaching a whole
new set of City Council policies - to be introduced on
May 1, 2007. I kid you not!

The La Jolla folks thought their hanging
offense had something to do with their bylaws,
apparently not. I thought it had to do with their
corporate status, apparently not. Scott
Peters'
Tuesday Docket
"explains":

"This request [for decertification] is
not about:

• The LJCPA's
bylaws.
• The LJCPA's
corporate status.
• The
validity under state law of the LJCPA's March elections.

The question is whether the City of San Diego will
require that a group receiving the benefits and
privileges of being a recognized community planning
group, including the promise of indemnity by the
citizens of the City of San Diego, follow the
provisions of Council Policies adopted by former and
current City Councils."

So, what the heck has La Jolla done to breach those
Council Policies? Nothing that I can determine. In fact
it may be the only planning group in the city that has
not.

Why does Peters want his own CPG
decertified? This is bizarre even for San Diego. Blaming
Jim Waring for wanting to get rid of all
Community Planning Groups doesn't quite explain it. We
all know that Jimbo wants to dismantle all community
involvement so his beloved developers can have a free
rein. That's why Sanders hired him.

But Jim Waring could not be doing any of this if Peters
was not manipulating the Council Docket for him. Is
Peters competing with him for top lapdog of the
developers? Is developer money and union hatred
Peters' strategy for a 2008 race against Aguirre? Peters
is sure stirring up that union hatred for Aguirre and he
seems to be going after that developer money with vigor.
What a scary thought: City Attorney Scott Peters.

Cecilia Williams, a staffer at the City's
Planning Department, "explained" at the April 5, 2007
meeting of the La Jolla Planning Group, that her
Department is bringing forward to the City Council on
May 1, 2007 a set of proposed amendments to existing
Council Policy 600-24. Therefore La Jolla is in
breach of a yet-to-be-announced Council Policy! The City
Council does not even know what it is La Jolla has done
wrong. Nobody does.

Watch the video

Watch as a La Jolla
questioner asked a Peters' staffer to explain what was
going on. Cecilia Williams of the Planning Department
jumped up and took over. She "explained" that Planning
had tried to get the policy amendments on the Docket in
April but failed. The questioner drew a laugh from the
audience when he observed that Planning seemed to have
had no trouble getting decertification on the April
docket but the policy amendment that caused that
decertification has to wait until May 1st. Does Cecilia
Williams think we're nuts? How can City staff treat the
public like that? It's so insulting.

This is like hanging a man in April for an offense that
may become law in May. To curry favor with developers
Scott Peters has docketed an item on April 24th that
will decertify a planning group, in his own Council
District, for breaching a Council policy that will not
be introduced until May 1st.

The La Jolla planning group may already be in compliance
with whatever new policy the City Council will set on
that date. Is that what Peters is afraid of? Why the
rush to decertification? This smells of high-stake
developer corruption. "Strippergate" after all was only
about how losers spend their own money in cheap strip
joints. This is about high-rise condos along the La
Jolla coast and billion dollar developments.

The worst abuses of Dick Murphy pale in comparison to
Peters' bizarre handling of the City Council chair. He
counts votes outside the Chamber and only allows a vote
when he is assured it will be to his liking. He
"continues" or "refers" everything else until arms can
be twisted behind the scenes and the "right" results
guaranteed. God forbid that this guy should ever run for
any public office ever again. He is a menace to
democracy.

Mr. Peters, flush this dishonest Docket Item down the
toilet where it belongs. And don't try your usual
"continuance" trick or your "refer back" trick on
Tuesday. Docketing it was an insult to San Diego. It is
time you found employment outside government.

Scott
Peters has a Napoleon complex. He thinks he is an
Emperor. The latest example is
his
letter to SDCERS.

He is "looking forward to an informative discussion"
with pension system administrator David Wescoe, at City
Council tomorrow, after barring the City Attorney from
that discussion. Yeah, that should do it Scott.

I looked through our City Charter and all through our
Municipal Code and found no trace of such Presidential
authority.

Images of Napoleon Bonaparte started to come to mind.
Napoleon didn't fuss much about petty details such as
the French Constitution, just as Peters ignores the
California Brown Act and the San Diego City Charter on a
daily basis.

Barring the City Attorney is just the latest in Peters'
neo-Napoleonic phase. Twice in the last four weeks
Peters arbitrarily dismissed key legislative Items from
the Council Agenda. He simply announced that the City
Council would not be voting on them. Pretty simple. They
were the Density Bonus Ordinance and the Budget
Amendment Ordinance. Both were crucial Council Items,
but because Peters didn't like the way the way the votes
were lining up, he arbitrarily confined them to
legislative limbo - until the votes look more to his
liking. A perfect Napoleonic power-grab - controlling
the agenda and who gets to speak.

Peters has twice refused to docket the La Jolla
Community Planning Association's Bylaws at City Council,
because he does not like the way they are written or the
precedence they might set for the rest of the city. He
has instead docketed an Agenda Item for April 24, 2007
decertifying that Planning Group. He intends to get his
way.

On March 26, 2007 he had the City Council
adopt a motion without the statutory 72 hour notice
to the public. That was a blatant breach of the
California Brown Act. But neither the Brown Act nor
Robert's Rules mean much to Mr. Peters.

Toni Atkins is the Councilmember requesting this pension
hearing. Here is
her 1472. She is Chair of the Budget and Finance
Committee and needs to know what is going on at SDCERS.
How does she feel about the City Attorney being barred
from this important hearing? Does she feel competent to
ask the questions Aguirre or his staff would ask? What
if something is amiss at SDCERS and she misses it? Isn't
that what this hearing is all about? She needs to think
long and hard before she goes along with Peters on this.

Obviously the City Attorney has some important questions
he would like to ask the pension administrator David
Wescoe. But Peters says "due to current and
threatened litigation between the City and SDCERS"
he has agreed to shield SDCERS from the City Attorney's
probing questions. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

So what is Peters up to? Does he know what Aguirre wants
to ask Wescoe? Is he protecting the part he himself
played in the pension crisis? Of course he is.

We know that Peters and Ron Saathoff are close. Anything
to do with SDCERS still has a lot to do with Saathoff.
He is a prime target in the "current and threatened
litigation between the City and SDCERS". If Saathoff
goes down, Peters goes with him. That is why he has
opposed Aguirre at every turn on the pension law suits -
survival.

Here is a link to
Peters 2004 election web site. Saathoff was central
to Peters' elections in 2000 and 2004. He is a master
campaigner, which is the source of his power. Peters has
remained faithful to Saathoff. Peters currently supports
a 4% raise for the firefighters. Is barring Aguirre just
another political payoff for Saathoff, or to ensure
Peters' own survival? What about the rest of the City
Council, particularly Toni Atkins?

Atkins should call for a vote tomorrow as to whether the
City Attorney may question the pension administrator or
not. I'm sure Donna Frye would second it. The public has
a right to know what the City Attorney wants to know. We
cannot trust the same City Councilmembers who granted
such massive illegal pension benefits to ask tough
questions when not asking questions was how they failed
us in the first place!

Peters was held by the Kroll Report to be the most
culpable of the Councilmembers. The San Diego public is
just too forgiving. They should have gotten rid of him
long ago. But because he got away scot-free he looks in
his La Jolla mirror and sees Napoleon.

If the City Council does not do it tomorrow, it will be
up to the public to knock Peters out of his Napoleonic
fantasy. When he tries to exclude the City Attorney
from a public discussion he excludes the public. The
Kroll Report was right about Peters. He is not fit to
serve in public office. He is not only the most
culpable, he is the most dangerous.

This Council is at a crossroads. It can follow Peters
down the same wrong path of 2002 or heed the warnings of
the Kroll Report. The public may not be as forgiving
next time.

On February 6, 2007 I wrote:
"Yesterday they all learned that they
underestimate the political skills of Councilmember Frye
at their peril - something Aguirre should also take on
board. I am heartened that our system is working as well
as it is. We may yet come out of all this as an example
for everybody."

That was the day Donna Frye took on both Sanders and Aguirre. And won!
The vote was 5 to 3 against the Mayor. The subject was
the first reading of an Ordinance addressing Sanders'
penchant for cutting city programs without telling
anybody. He had claimed he didn't need City Council's
permission to cut a swim program for poor kids. Wrong.

Two months later all Sanders has succeeded in proving is
Frye's superior grasp of what the people of San Diego
want. He may have a superior grasp of what the Chamber
of Commerce and the Building Industry Association want,
but he has no idea what the average San Diegan in the
street thinks. He is the developers' Mayor and that's
all.

All my fears of a Sanders puppet horror show evaporated
today under the steady hand of Ms. Frye. She had
orchestrated the public's response to Sanders power grab
with the finesse of a master politician. Her loyal
supporters turned up in droves at City Hall to let her
know they still love her. It was pleasant to see all the
old faces from her campaign.

At first they were worried and uncertain until Mike
Aguirre took the microphone shortly after 2:00 P.M. It
was immediately obvious that he was abandoning the Mayor
and killing the ordinance. He was abandoning the
legal
opinion he had issued last Friday. He knew it would
not survive a court challenge. He knew that Article 11.1
of the City Charter means exactly what it says - no part
of "any ordinance or resolution which raises or
spends public monies" is delegable.

The Mayor could not disguise his disgust. He wondered,
sarcastically, why it took the City Attorney so long to
see the clarity of Article 11.1. Aguirre had now ticked
off just about everybody. How must his staff who
researched and wrote the legal opinion have felt when
they saw their boss trash their work in public?

The look on Tony Young's face was priceless. Just when
he thought he was on the way up he was on the way down.
He could not even look at Aguirre. In the morning he was
praising Aguirre and challenging the credentials of a
constitutional scholar who disagreed with Aguirre and
spoke at the invitation of Ms. Frye. What a difference a
lunch break makes. Young obviously never saw the Aguirre
about-face coming.

It was obvious that Aguirre's action would make it
impossible to get anything adopted today, so Peters
announced that the Council would not be voting on
Item-330 or 331 today. He entertained a new motion to
refer "it" to the Budget Committee. What exactly was
referred to the Budget Committee and for what purpose,
we do not know.

It will be interesting to see what Toni Atkins, chair of
the Budget Committee, will put on her docket, if
anything. The City Council has its own way of burying
its failures.

The death of Item-330 is a huge victory for Donna Frye
and a huge defeat for Jerry Sanders. I hope this gives
her the courage to challenge him again in 2008. I have
absolutely no doubt that she would beat him. What has he
achieved in eighteen months? All he knows is daily press
conferences and making threats in order to get his way.
He is not a consensus builder. There was no consensus in
City Hall today, just strife.

Donna Frye is a consensus builder. She proved today that
she can manage an issue and get her way. Sanders had to
walk away empty handed. Aguirre had to (reluctantly)
admit that she was right - Article 11.1 means exactly
what it says. Well done Donna.

Tomorrow will be Sanders' fourth
attempt (2/5/2007, 03/05/07 and 03/19/07)
to defeat an Ordinance "Declaring
budget change authority granted to the Mayor requires
City Council approval if such action will result in
materially and substantially reducing, altering, or
eliminating service levels to the community, based upon
the Fiscal Year 2007 Budget".

Scott Peters and Tony Young proposed a compromise that
would give Sanders
the power to cut the Council-approved budget of any one
department by 10% or $4 million, whichever is the
greater. The trouble with this compromise is that it
would give Mayor Sanders the power to leverage
"influence" on the City Council. He has more than once
demonstrated a clear tendency towards bullying in order
to get his way.

I can readily imagine a Councilmember identified as the
swing vote on an important issue, getting a call from
"staff" the night before the City Council vote. The
unfortunate Councilmember would be told that "staff" had
reluctantly decided that a certain program, (one known
to be very dear to particular Councilmember and to an
influential segment of his/her District) would have to
be cut, for economic reasons of course.

Copious expressions of regret would be expressed by
"staff" and the Councilmember. The sympathetic "staff"
would then wish the hardworking Councilmember "good
look" in what "staff" knows must be a difficult decision
on a particular Item on tomorrow's City Council Docket.
Even a City Councilmember couldn't fail to get the hint.

The Councilmember would then mention that he/she was
leaning towards voting a certain way (the way known to
be favored by the Mayor). "Staff" would reassure the
Councilmember that the Mayor has always held the
Councilmember in high regard and offer to try and
persuade the Mayor to take another look at the budget
item mentioned earlier. Even an eavesdropper could find
nothing incriminating with the conversation.

Apart from the potential for corruption (or maybe
because of it), our City Charter outlaws such an
Ordinance. Here is the relevant section."Charter
Section 11.1: Legislative Power — NondelegableThe same prohibition against delegation of
the legislative power which is imposed on the State
Legislature by Article XI, Section 11a of the
Constitution of the State of California shall apply to
the City Council of The City of San Diego, so that its
members shall not delegate legislative power or
responsibility which they were elected to exercise in
the adoption of any ordinance or resolution which raises
or spends public monies, including but not limited to
the City’s annual budget ordinance or any part
thereof, and the annual ordinance setting
compensation for City employees, or any ordinance or
resolution setting public policy."

Scott Peters has cunningly docketed
his item before the Donna
Frye/IBA item tomorrow.

ITEM-330: "Alternative
Proposal for Amendments to the Appropriations Ordinance;
Repeal of BPR Ordinance; All Relating to the Budget
Authority of the Mayor and City Council" (would give
Sanders 10% or $4 million per department with which to
blackmail individual City Councilors) vs. Donna
Frye's ITEM-331: "Amendments to the Appropriations
Ordinance, Repeal of BPR Ordinance, and Resolutions to
Clarify Budget Process Requirements" (budget
authority would remain with the City Council).

Surely even this City Council will not dare pass such an
Ordinance tomorrow. But you never know with these
veterans of deceit. It is really up to Aguirre. So far
he has been solidly on the side of the Mayor on this
issue. If he gives the City Council the nod to disobey
the City Charter, they will do it. Then, not only the
City's two chief law enforcement officers, but the City
Council itself, will be puppets of Sanders.

I say the two chief law enforcement officers because
Aguirre seems to have obeyed Sanders in not going after
the Mayor's staff with regard to Sunroad. Aguirre was
hot on the trail of Ms. Escobar-Ecke believing her to be
Tom Story's accomplice in the alleged wrongdoing with
regard to the Sunroad building.

I have good reason to believe that she was the real
target of Aguirre's search warrant and that Lansdowne
leaked the search warrant to protect Escobar-Ecke, not
Tom Story. Then Aguirre unexpectedly told the media last
week that he is no longer investigating any
member of City staff with regard to Sunroad. That is
very troubling.

It is also very troubling that Aguirre has publicly
pardoned Chief Lansdowne for leaking the contents of
this important search warrant. If Aguirre sides with
Sanders tomorrow, the entire City Government will have
become puppets of the Mayor. An amazing achievement in
barely eighteen months. God knows where we will be after
eight years.

The good people of La Jolla filled the La Jolla
Recreation Center this evening in a packed town hall
meeting where they told Jim Waring exactly what they
thought of his dictatorial interference in their
community planning association. Speaker after speaker
gave Waring and his staff a tongue lashing for the
high-handed way they have treated the people of La Jolla
in recent months. I videoed the whole thing and will put
up excerpts in a later blog.

The strange thing about this ugly confrontation between
people and City Hall is that it would not be happening
if La Jolla's own Councilmember, Scott Peters was on his
constituents' side. Much verbal La Jolla anger was
directed tonight at Peters for having twice refused to
docket their request to have the La Jolla planning
group's bylaws approved by City Council. Instead Peters
has docketed Waring's recommendation to have La Jolla
decertified as a planning group on April 24, 2007.
Peters wants to decertify his own planning group! Unless
it first complies with Waring's dictat. Unbelievable!

Peters is in hock to the City's Development Services
Department that is committed to eliminating as far as
possible any brake community planning groups may have on
the onward march of developers. All Waring has to do is
wave Peters' list of campaign contributors in his face
and Peters gives him whatever he wants.
Here is
the list. It seems to trump the popular vote in the
La Jolla Recreation Center every time.

Tonight approximately 90% of assembled La Jollans voted
against Waring and Peters. This is the third time since
January that well over 100 La Jolla residents turned out
to send an overwhelming democratic message to Peters and
Waring. So far they have been completely ignored and
arrogantly overridden, making it clear that developer
money runs this City. Be sure to read
Peters'
developer contribution list and judge for yourself.

To Peters, a vote means nothing, unless it is
accompanied by a $250 contribution, the only vote that
counts.

I learned something tonight that shocked me. Of the 42
Community Planning Groups across the city only six are
incorporated, La Jolla being one of them. The shocking
thing is that most of them have been forced by the City
to adopt two sets of bylaws, one corporate and one for
dealing with the City. How can that be? How can a
corporation have two sets of bylaws? Isn't that like
keeping two sets of books? How can the City be a party
to that? There must be a lot of dittohead "placemen" on
those other community planning groups. Thank goodness
for La Jolla. I hope they continue to stand their
ground.

The real reason Waring wants to decertify the La Jolla
planning group is to stamp out any ideas of corporate
planning groups right across the city. It's as simple as
that. Waring and his City staff want to deal only with
entities they can control. Under the Waring-dictated
rules tonight's vote could never have happened. His
"placemen" would have done their duty. How many of the
42 community planning groups are like that?

Developers use Delaware LLCs, where nobody can determine
ownership, but the people of this city may not even use
a California not-for-profit corporation? No wonder La
Jolla is in revolt. And La Jolla will win. There is no
way Peters can deliver on his quisling promise to Waring.
His constituents will recall him if he votes to
decertify them on April 24th.

Maybe
Aguirre was just sleep-walking with a guy named Sanders.
04/04/07

I listened to Mike Aguirre give long responses to even
longer "questions" at a press conference today. He was
surprisingly patient with members of the media who had
not done their homework on this Sunroad warrant issue.
The press boys had just come from a Police Officers
Association (POA) press conference where the men in blue
had circled the wagons around their Chief and hurled
personal abuse at the City Attorney.

Lansdowne had given interviews this morning to augment
the POA rant against Aguirre. I wasn't present at the
Lansdowne interviews, in his plush downtown office, but
I have a hunch the brave newsmen who laid into Aguirre
in La Jolla were a little less aggressive with Police
Chief Lansdowne. Why is that?

Why has none of them asked Lansdowne whether or not he
telephoned Mayor Sanders on Wednesday afternoon March
21st and told him about the Aguirre search warrant? That
warrant contained references to senior members of Mayor
Sanders staff, particularly Ms. Escobar-Ecke, his
Director of Development Services. Why has nobody asked
for the telephone logs of Lansdowne and Sanders? Does
the media kiss up to power in this town? Are they afraid
to ask? Thomas Jefferson once said: "When
governments fear people, there is liberty. When the
people fear the government, there is tyranny".

One thing was clear to me today, things have changed
between Aguirre and the Mayor.

Aguirre looked thoughtful when speaking about Sanders,
like he had lost an old friend. It must be difficult for
him to hear his "friend" Sanders describe his warrant as
"reprehensible" on the Roger Hedgecock show. Actually
the people of San Diego are the injured party, not Mike.
Sooner or later they will come to realize that. The
over-aggressive rhetoric of the Police Union today will
come back to haunt them when their chief is disgraced.
Facts are stubborn things. It is just a matter of time.
The POA has called for an apology from Aguirre, they may
be the ones making the apology.

Sanders may come to
regret not sticking by his friend Aguirre. Has he forgotten
about his "battle of the
budget"
on Tuesday? He
cannot win it without him. Ever since getting elected in
2005 Sanders has assumed knee-jerk support from Aguirre,
and he has got it. If Aguirre turns against him, this
"popular" Mayor will find San Diego a whole different
place. He has totally underestimated the combined
popularity and political strength of Frye and Aguirre.
The people may not always be ecstatic about them but
they know and trust them, warts and all. All they know
about Sanders is what Fred Sainz tells them. He is just
a suit. He reads his lines and does what he is told.
That's why they picked him.

Here is Tuesday's City Council Docket:

ITEM-330: "Alternative
Proposal for Amendments to the Appropriations Ordinance;
Repeal of BPR Ordinance; All Relating to the Budget
Authority of the Mayor and City Council" (would give
Sanders 10% or $4 million per department with which to
blackmail individual City Councilors) vs. Donna
Frye's ITEM-331: "Amendments to the Appropriations
Ordinance, Repeal of BPR Ordinance, and Resolutions to
Clarify Budget Process Requirements" (budget
authority would remain with the City Council).

This may be the beginning of the end for Sanders
mayoralty. He should never have taken that call from
Lansdowne. He was a career cop and knew all about the
sanctity of warrants. If Lansdowne had genuine legal
concerns he should have called Judge Clarke for
reassurance and clarification. Instead he called Sanders
and doomed them both.

After Tuesday's City Council vote we may be back to
pre-2005 city politics. Sanders may be facing the
dynamic-duo who were really going to clean up
San Diego until he hijacked the title and did the exact
opposite. This city is more corrupt now than it was in
2005. It is more corrupt than under Murphy or Golding,
and that is saying something.

Maybe Aguirre was just
sleep-walking with a guy named Sanders.

Warrantgate;
what did the Mayor know and when did he know it?
04/03/07

Wednesday
March 21, 2007, 3:16 P.M.: San Diego Superior
Court Judge George “Woody” Clarke signed this
search
warrant. Search warrants are issued on behalf of the
People of the State of California to "any Sheriff,
Police Officer or Peace Officer in the County of San
Diego". They are not requests, they are a direct command by a Judge of the Superior Court on
behalf of the People of the State California. They
must be obeyed.

The law defines a search warrant as “an order in
writing, in the name of the people, signed by a
magistrate, directed to a peace officer, commanding
him or her etc".

Friday March 23, 2007: David Hasemyer of the U-T
wrote in an article: "The
City Attorney's Office has obtained a search warrant for
the office of Tom Story, a vice president for Sunroad
Enterprises" and "As of last night, it had not
been served".

Therefore, the day after a search warrant was signed
against him, Tom Story was aware of it and was talking
to the Union-Tribune.
Hasemyer reported: "Story
said the company's lawyers offered late yesterday
[Thursday] to give Aguirre any documents he wanted in
exchange for his promise not to execute the search
warrant. Story said the company hopes to avoid the
public spectacle that a search would create". Who
warned him?

It is clear that the warrant had already been leaked to
both its target and to the press. Aguirre found out
about the leak Thursday afternoon. Alex Roth
reported in the U-T: "William Maheu, San Diego's
assistant police chief, was in his office Thursday
afternoon when he received a call from City Attorney
Michael Aguirre. The city attorney was livid."

Roth continued: "Aguirre was on the phone, demanding
a reason for the delay, his tone so agitated that Maheu
was “taken aback." Maheu recalled: "It was not a
pleasant conversation, and I didn't say much".
Aguirre realized that the Police Chief was defying a
court order by refusing to execute a search warrant. The
legal system was in crisis.

Saturday March 25, 2007:
Deciding that attack
was the best form of defense, Bob Kittle wrote a piece
in the
U-T's editorial page.
He congratulated Lansdowne for refusing to serve Aguirre's "baseless
search warrant" and wrote:
"After reading the
affidavit filed by Aguirre in requesting the warrant
from Superior Court Judge Woody Clarke, Lansdowne
concluded there was no evidence of any crime."

Obviously Kittle had spoken to Lansdowne. As an
experienced journalist he would hardly invent such a
thing. There could be no doubt: Lansdowne was not only
refusing to carry out a command of the court but
had alerted the targets of the search warrant. Surely
unprecedented! Sunday March 25, 2007: Alex Roth
reported in the U-T: "in an interview yesterday,
San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne confirmedthat he refused to let his officers conduct the
search, despite Aguirre's request. The chief said he had
no faith in Aguirre's assertion that the search might
uncover evidence of a crime. The chief said he reviewed
the facts of the case and couldn't see how such a search
could be justified."

Tuesday March 27, 2007: Bob Kittle, in
full editorial fury, was calling on Judge Clarke "to
unseal the affidavit and the search warrant so that San
Diegans can see for themselves what prompted Chief
Lansdowne, an official of unquestioned integrity, to put
an end to Aguirre's planned police search of Sunroad's
offices." He gloated: "With Chief Lansdowne
standing firmly on principle and refusing to execute a
groundless search, Aguirre reached a deal with Sunroad
to abandon the search."

Putting the above pieces together, is the following how
it really happened?

Wednesday March 21st: Lansdowne receives
the search warrant late in the afternoon; he calls
Sanders (Aguirre told
KPBS: "Within hours on Wednesday, last Wednesday the
21st, it was leaked to the Mayor's Office" and Bob
Kittle confirmed that important fact on the same
program); Sanders realizes that one of his senior staff,
Marcela Escobar-Eck, his Director of Development
Services, is involved and vulnerable; he thanks
Lansdowne for the heads-up and calls Bonnie Dumanis to
see what can be done; she in turn calls Sherriff Bill
Kollender; they confer together and decide that
Lansdowne can refuse to execute the search warrant;
Escobar-Eck is warned and in turn warns Tom Story; Story
gets Sunroad's corporate lawyers on the job; Story's
office is sanitized.

Thursday March 22nd: Bob Kittle of the
Union-Tribune is notified; Kittle alerts the U-T news
department; reporter David
Hasemyer breaks the story; because of the delay Aguirre
smells a rat and calls Lansdowne's office, speaks toassistant police
chief, William Maheu; Aguirre talks to Sunroad's
lawyers who offer to give him any documents he wanted in
exchange for his promise not to execute the search (how
he was supposed to execute the search is not clear;
Kittle goes on the attack to
give Lansdowne cover.

The moment Police Chief Lansdowne picked up that phone
and called whoever he called to leak Aguirre's search
warrant and announce that he would not execute it, this
city went into deep crisis. It will remain in that crisis until
Lansdowne is either fired or resigns. In the meantime
Mayor Sanders is accountable to the people of San Diego.

A privileged few have escaped the law because the Police
Chief protected them. An illegal building continues to
be built while its developer continues to thumb its
corporate nose at the FAA. Pilots' lives continue to be
put in danger.

If Sanders does not fire Lansdowne, recall proceedings
must be commenced. The people cannot let this stand. To
do so would be to accept that law and order has broken
down in San Diego. This is a defining moment for
Sanders. He is the Mayor and must lead. If he continues
to take Lansdowne's side against the people, he will not
only be subject to a voter recall but will be guilty of
obstruction of justice while engaging in a criminal
conspiracy. There is no easy way out of this crisis.
Serious illegalities have occurred.

The Sanders administration seems to have chosen La Jolla
as the battleground over community involvement (or the
lack of it) in city government. They are waging a war
with the Bird Rock community over Form-based Codes, an attack on traditional use-based land zoning, now they want to impose their will on the La Jolla
Community Planning Association (LJCPA), that represents all of
La Jolla on all land use issues in the area.

Jim
Waring is spending an inordinate amount of his high-paid time wrangling over some minor points in
the LJCPA's By Laws (I have several emails and
letters, one of them written by Waring on a Sunday!). Why
are these By Laws so important to him? He even enrolled the aid of Scott
Peters to stop their approval by City Council. Peters
had been personally asked by Aguirre to docket them for
Council approval. But Peters said in a letter to LJCPA
that the "Mayor's Office", presumably Waring, did not
want the LJCPA's version of the By Laws approved.
So much for Peters' dedication to communities.

So what are these By Law provisions that has Waring so
energized and why?

It is of course a
trick. It is always a trick with Waring. If LJCPA passes
the Proposed Motion being thrust before it on Thursday,
it will be throwing away thousands of unpaid community
hours spent drawing up an excellent set of By Laws that
reflect the La Jolla community's aims and character. It
is Waring's way of trashing the community's work.

Thursday's Proposed Motion is all about this sentence: "re-adopt
the previous City approved bylaws (approval date
1-1-92)" - eliminating proxy voting and reducing the
number of meetings for Membership is just a cover.
Waring wants to impose his own By Laws by threatening
"decertification" of the Planning Group, if he does not
get his way.

The
ideological difference between the two sets of By Laws
is in how many people should have a say in community
planning. Waring wants to impose a system where only a
small group of decision makers, that he can control,
will decide local planning issues. La Jolla and other
communities around the city, want to widen the
involvement by local people in planning. The last thing
Waring wants. Nor Peters apparently.

So the stage is set for a showdown at 6:00 P.M. in the
La Jolla Recreation Center, 615 Prospect Street,
this Thursday at 6:00 P.M. April
5th, 2007. Waring is determined to make an example of La
Jolla by bending them to his will. Community Planning
Groups citywide will be watching.

How prepared are the La
Jolla residents? I would say very prepared. They know
what is at stake. They know that they represent the rest
of the city in this battle with Waring. They believe
that their hard work resulted in actually improving the
City's By Laws template (shell) that Waring wishes to
impose on each one of them.

There are many principles at stake: e.g. the City does
not want these community planning groups to become
incorporated. That would deprive the City of the main
leverage it has over them: indemnity. The City wants the
planning groups barefoot and pregnant with regard to
legal liability. Incorporation would liberate them from
that.

The La Jolla model is incorporated and consists of
Members. The LJCPA defines itself as consisting of
all its Members. The City's By Laws template (shell)
defines a planning group as consisting only of
its elected Board or Trustees and restricts that
number to a maximum of 20. That hardly results in
"diversity" or "broad representation" as called for in
Council Policy 600-24, the governing document for these
community bodies.

Also, the LJCPA has a "recall" provision that Waring and
the City want to get rid of. It may be because the
recall provision has to do with an official "not
acting in the public's best interest", which
is quite different from "acting in the City's
best interest".

It is obvious that Sanders does not like community
involvement. He wants to micromanage any advisory body
that he cannot eliminate. Read
today's U-T article on the number of boards and commissions Sanders is
deliberately letting die on the vine.

In the case of La Jolla, Sanders' lieutenant Jim Waring,
wants to fully control the By Laws of a non-profit
public benefit corporation that has equal status with
the City itself under California Corporations Code. This
is all the more amazing when the City Attorney agrees
with the La Jolla Community Planning Association in all
aspects of this dispute.

It is obvious that something much bigger is at stake
than a few obscure points in a set of not-for-profit By
Laws. I will report on the outcome of Thursday's
meeting.